


Soft Reset

by QueenofBaws (Sisterwives)



Category: Silent Hill, Silent Hill (Video Game Series)
Genre: Angst, Blood and Gore, Body Horror, F/M, Gen, slow spiraling descent into madness, tags and warnings will update with chapters
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2014-12-02
Updated: 2017-08-03
Packaged: 2018-02-27 21:59:43
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 5
Words: 33,552
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2708246
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Sisterwives/pseuds/QueenofBaws
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Dead people can't write letters, corpses can't laugh, and those who don't learn from past mistakes are doomed to repeat them.</p><p>James Sunderland has forgotten something very, very important.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. 208

The water that dribbled down into his hands was tepid at best, flecked with mildew and decay, but by the time the rank, metallic smell of corrosion hit his nostrils, it was too late. He flung the liquid from his hands, stifling a groan or a gag or something in between, furiously wiping his palms against the faded denim of his jeans in a futile attempt to dry himself off.

The restroom of the observation deck hadn’t exactly been his _first_ choice, but by the time he’d gotten off the highway, he’d been driving nonstop for…

Well, to be frank, he wasn’t even entirely _sure_ , anymore. The hours had all blurred together into one unending stretch, not unlike the lines painted on the road, and he found he couldn’t so much as remember whether or not he’d had the radio on. Had there even been any traffic? His head was abuzz with white noise, the soothing crackle of late-night television snow, leaving his brain feeling somehow congested.

He’d stepped foot into the decrepit public bathroom with the intention of splashing some cold water on his face, hoping it would be enough to snap him out of the fugue he found himself in. But there was no relief to be found there among the clustering of forgotten urinals, stained by misuse and mineral deposits.

For a moment, he bowed his head, fingers gripping white-knuckle tight to the sides of the sink; his eyelids were heavy and his joints ached something fierce, but he brought himself to straighten back up, all the same. The mirror over the sink was peculiarly small, nothing more than a cracked tile of glass set at eye level. He chalked the shadows under his eyes up to the poor lighting and general dreariness of the restroom. Still, he looked tired— _beaten_. He ran his hand down his face once, ignoring the sickeningly sharp smell of copper plumbing on his fingers, watching his reflection as if to reassure himself that yes, that was _him_ staring back.

In a place like that—where all the harsh edges and lines were eroded by time, by darkness, by rust—it was difficult to tell if _anything_ was real.

He turned away from the mirror and the questioning sadness of his own eyes, footsteps echoing quietly against the concrete floor with grit and dust. With a shoulder, he hefted the weighed door open to be met immediately with a burst of crisp lake air; the light of day cut a harsh wedge through the darkness of the bathroom, throwing graffiti and cobwebs alike into harsh contrast. It was the sort of scene one might see in a dream, he thought, unable to make out the words and faces plastered on the walls.

But now his lungs were filling with the cool, clear air of the real world, hinting of pine needles and autumn instead of stale urine and faulty plumbing. The observation deck offered a beautiful bird’s eye view of the water, and long before he realized, he had leaned himself up against the guardrail, arms folded as he doubled himself over the edge. There was a fog rolling over the crests of the water, thick and grey, so unlike the last time he’d gazed out across the shore. And just how long ago _had_ that been? The knot between his eyes tightened warningly, the answer slipping away from him like water through cupped palms.

Part of him still refused to believe it was real—any of it. The cloudiness in his head, the lightness of his feet, the eerie silence of the parking lot…he had the strangest inkling that any minute now, any second, he would roll over and startle himself awake. He would find himself in bed, safe and warm in the first rays of the morning’s light, woken by the smell of freshly brewed coffee and bacon sizzling in a pan.

Of course, that was impossible.

This was no dream: there was no pain in dreams, yet he could very distinctly feel the sharp edge of the rail cutting into the flesh of his hand; you couldn’t see your own reflection in dreams, it was said, but he had only just examined the weary expression of his own, the beginnings of crows feet and worry lines making him look much older; mostly though, everything made sense in dreams—at least to the dreamer—and _nothing_ made sense just then.

The letter had appeared innocuously enough, tucked in amid the stack of bills and business flyers that usually clogged the mailbox. Its envelope was plain and white, the sort you could buy in a box of hundreds at the post office. Still, his heart had caught in his throat and his stomach twisted into gnarls when he came to it. There had been no return address, no stamp, nothing but a name written in the soft, flowing hand he saw whenever he closed his eyes.

“ _Mary_ ,” the envelope had said. His wife’s name.

But that was _ridiculous_ , and it couldn’t have _possibly_ been true. At least…that’s what he kept telling himself.

Thinking back on it now, he wondered why there hadn’t been a moment of incensement or fury—why hadn’t he allowed himself to think, even for an _instant_ , that it had been some sort of cruel prank? Why hadn’t he considered that it might have been nothing more than a horrible joke played on a tired, grieving widower? He had simply taken it at face value, unquestioningly and immediately; he had sat on the bed with a sort of quiet reverence, gingerly prying open the envelope to avoid damaging its contents.

The paper smelled like her. Each tiny groove created by her pen was like some lost psalm to him, carrying the soft lilt of her voice, the sparkle in her eyes. It was difficult to remember, the buzzing in his head making it hard to hear his own thoughts, but he thought he remembered breaking down, if only for a minute or two. Perhaps he knew, somewhere deep and dark within himself, but there were plenty of other reasons his eyes could’ve been so red and raw. It was best not to dwell, he had decided. Best to avoid the headache and heartache.

“ _In my restless dreams_ ,” the letter had begun, full of the ethereal poetry he had fallen in love with, all those years ago, “ _I see that town…Silent Hill. You promised you’d take me there again someday, but…you never did. Well, I’m alone there now. In our special place._ Waiting for you.”

His head spun as he thought on it, absently reaching up to clutch at his breast pocket if only to assure himself that the letter was still there, folded into a careful square, the paper only just beginning to fade and tear at the worry-worn creases. Her picture would be there, too, wrapped in the safe cocoon of her own words and perfume, smiling that gentle, understanding smile…

He dropped his head into his hands, brow knit, eyes clenched shut against the roiling of his thoughts and gorge. There was no way Mary could’ve been waiting there, somewhere just past the greenery and fallen leaves. There was no way she could’ve sent the letter in the first place.

Dead people simply didn’t _do_ those things.

And yet he’d driven all this way, taken nothing but the clothes on his back and the letter clutched in his hand, a man possessed. He couldn’t explain why, couldn’t put into words the reason he had felt so compelled, so impossibly convinced that he would find her there, smile bright and wide, eyes cast out toward the sun as it dipped below the watery horizon.

He pushed himself up from his lean and made his way to the parked car. The engine was still clicking sporadically as it cooled down from the long drive. With a sigh, he jiggled the driver’s side door handle, fighting tiredly as it caught like it always did. The interior of the car smelled hot and stagnant, and he wrinkled his nose against a waft of something sharp and pungent. Something must’ve rolled under a seat, last time he’d gone for groceries—he would worry about it later, a few more hours couldn’t do too much harm, if he was only noticing it now. There were more important things at play, just then. The map lay where he left it, folded into a neat rectangle on the driver’s seat, and he snatched it up before pushing the door shut.

In all reality, he didn’t think he would much need the map. He’d only been to Silent Hill once—and what a trip it had been—but he felt the oddest sense of ease, of _knowing_ , almost as though he’d spent a lifetime there. Then again, one never _could_ be too safe, and he didn’t want to seem like the typical tourist to the locals, stumbling past shop fronts and asking with sheepish gestures where to find the Happy Burger.

With one last glance over his shoulder towards the car, the observation deck, the sad little bathroom, he descended the stairs to the scenic route into town. The path was little more than dirt tamped down from years of heavy footfall, flanked by the thick foliage of pine trees. He made his way down the spiraling slope slowly, cautious of loose gravel and muddy patches, uncomfortably aware of the precipitous drop only a few feet to his right. The lake was beautiful, to be sure, but he had no interest in an impromptu plunge—or the broken neck almost ensured by the rocky outcroppings. He could hear the waves lapping against the face of the cliff, amplified and warped by the heavy air and behemoth tree trunks. Somewhere in the distance, he thought he heard the dutiful whirring of a chainsaw, the mourning chirrup of cicadas, and felt somehow ill at ease. He zipped his jacket up to his chin and shoved his hands into his pockets as best he could, hunching himself against the prying eyes of solitude.

He walked for quite some time, until the crash of the water became a second heartbeat and his lungs strained with the burning chill of the air. The lay of the land slowly began to even out, the soil and pebbles under his feet giving way to stone and grass. Already he could see the arch of the wrought-iron gates taking form in the fog, looming from yards away, though the fog made it difficult to discern much more than vague shapes.

There was a small well just off of the path, cobbled together with what might have been sandstone or brick, angles bleached and eroded dull by time. As he passed, something caught his eye—a spot of color where it didn’t belong. Too tired, too _curious_ to be apprehensive, he stepped up to the well and its cozy little housing, brushing away a spider as it dangled from the a beam. He peered into the water, dingy and clouded with mosquito eggs and moss, at once perplexed and riveted by what he saw clinging to the bottom of the basin.

A bolt of pain tore through his head, exploding into razor-sharp migraine shards behind his eyes. He cried out, clutched at his temples, but it was gone almost as soon as it began, leaving his eyes fever-bright and watering. Horrified, he glanced back down to the tiny red square of paper in the water, almost accusatorily. _Déjà vu_ , he thought…it _had_ to be. There was no other logical reason for him to feel so strange, so _familiar_. For a moment it was almost as though he was watching himself from afar, as though his movements were all somehow choreographed and planned…and then it was gone.

James raked his fingers through his hair, covering his face with his palms as he breathed. He should’ve stopped at one of the motels on the way from home, should’ve gotten some sleep instead of driving through the night. He could feel his breath in his ears and taste copper in the back of his mouth. He was just _so tired_. Maybe there would be a room open at the Lakeview, once he got into town. Maybe that was even what Mary’s letter had meant.

Though he pushed the well and his strange moment of injury from his mind, the backs of his eyes burned brilliantly, stunningly red—not unlike the paper and its quivering reflection. He shook himself out mentally, right hand reaching to pat at the folded mass in his jacket pocket once more. It was a strange sort of comfort he took from knowing the letter was there, a sort of sentiment he wasn’t sure he could put words to. Mary was with him in that way, she was waiting for him in another.

He continued on to the gates, watching as they became slowly more defined through the fog. The cemetery laid spread out behind its heavy bars and spines, the thick haze giving it a particularly haunted air. A tentative push found the lock unlatched, and with a shrill, metallic squeal, he was able to step onto the grounds. The grass beneath his feet was dry and brittle, beginning to brown with the first cold snap of the season, crunching quietly under his shoes.

No time was wasted in crossing through the cemetery. Even on the best of days James was made uncomfortable in the face of death, the sort of deeply embedded anxiety that made others whistle or hold their breath when passing by. He wasn’t a superstitious man, not by any stretch of the imagination, but ever since Mary…he didn’t like thinking about death and its inevitabilities. Thankfully the lot was small, only one of the town’s three graveyards, if memory served, and the gate leading into the town proper had graciously been left ajar.

The path tapered off into dirt and dust once more, and he couldn’t help but bemoan the foolish decision to walk. If he had stayed on the main road, he could’ve been in town by then, wandering the streets and the spots that had meant so much, once upon a time. He could find the familiar roads and shops, retrace their steps…Mary had mentioned waiting in their “special place,” but the entire _town_ had been their special place, way back when. Well…everywhere except _here,_ that was, lost among the fences and silos of the old ranch; tucked away from the hustle and bustle of town, too far from the roads and the lake to explain away the strange scampering sounds and reverberated footsteps. He should have driven.

But still he soldiered on, running off of fumes and funereal hope. His mind wandered to their honeymoon, the places they’d been and seen, and that was all well and good because his feet seemed to implicitly remember the way. There was the lake, of course…Mary had _loved_ the lake. They had spent an entire day out there, just watching the water shimmer underneath the sun. There hadn’t been any fog, then, just the mountains and trees and the happy chatter of people enjoying the day. She had laughed that laugh of hers, and he’d seen the way her eyes crinkled just at the corners with a silent smile whenever some happy child had run by, begging their parents for a quarter to use the sightseeing machines. What a beautiful day. It had been unseasonably warm for spring, but she had pulled her cardigan tight around her shoulders because she had woken up with a slight chill that…

He realized, with no small amount of surprise, that he’d reached the town.

His first thought was that he had forgotten some high holiday, so absorbed in his grief and suspended belief that he neglected to check the print on his calendar. But that couldn’t be right, could it? Not unless it was some local custom he was naïve to…but the storefronts were dark, the streets barren and quiet. As he took a few tentative steps onto Sanders Street, he was greeted by nothing more than the clipped echoes of his own shoes, the disfigured gait of his shadow, the roll of the fog.

James was struck, then, by an uncomfortably impossible suspicion: he was alone in the town.

At that, he had to laugh at himself—albeit a low, uneasy chuckle—this was _Silent Hill_. Silent Hill, the tourist hub, the resort town on the water, chock full of history and memories waiting to be made. Of _course_ there would be other people.

But then…why was it so _quiet_?

Brow furrowed and shoulders squared, he made his way onto the sidewalk. It was just the off-season, perhaps, or there was some bigger event taking place in town, in Rose Water Park, maybe. That had to be it—he had just happened to stumble into one of the quieter areas. Between his exhaustion and the weight of the fog, his imagination was starting to get the better of him. Or so he thought, until he reached the spread of restaurants in the center of town. 

“OPEN!” claimed the sign hung jauntily in the window of Café Texan, spelled out in big block letters accompanied by the beaming, sun-faded face of a cartoon toucan. But it seemed no one had bothered to inform the Texan itself; the interior was hidden in darkness, the door bolted steadfast. He cupped his palms to the glass and peered in, but was met by nothing more than the vague shapes of tables and chairs, dotted here and there with salt and pepper shakers, tiny sentinels guarding over the silverware.

The same could be said for Café Mist, only a few doors down. And then Big Jay’s, across the street. And The Lucky Jade. And the market.

There was something beginning to prickle its way up the back of his neck, somehow ice cold and scalding hot all at once, causing his arms and chest to break out into horrible gooseflesh. Something was not right here—not right _at all_. He found his voice caught deep in his throat, suddenly unable to speak, unable to _breathe_. He was being smothered by the silence, momentarily reverting to a child caught in a nightmare, too afraid of the shrillness of their own screams to cry out for help.

Coming here had been a mistake, he could see that now. Hell, he could _feel it_ , heavy and leaden in the pit of his stomach. His hand found its way to his pocket, to his heart, worrying over the thick mat of paper within. Mary had wanted him here, hadn’t she? Through some impossible grace of God, she had reached out to him, called him here, and _oh_ did he want to see her again. But something was _not right_.

When he looked up again, he recognized the building immediately. A faint blossom of relief began to bloom in the depth of his chest, tempered only slightly by the dryness of his tongue.

The letters on the door read Neely’s, and there was a light flickering from just inside. It was hard to make out at first, the window having been patched over with what seemed to be newspaper—last time he’d passed through, it had been thick burgundy curtains, all the better to keep out the sun and judgmental eyes—but if he trained his eyes just hard enough, it was clear as day. And voices… _voices!_ The walls dampened most of it, and there weren’t any words he could parse, but there were _voices_ coming from inside. The door was locked, and so he knocked, rapping his knuckles hard enough to bruise against the door. Under normal circumstances, he would’ve felt ridiculous making such a scene, but this was just what he needed. His nerves had been jangled since the beginning, his mind was playing tricks on him, and all he wanted to do was pull up to one of the stools, take his weight off his feet and have a nice, long drink to smooth him out.

No one answered, and so he knocked harder, convinced that it was only that he couldn’t be heard over their conversation. Maybe the jukebox was playing too loudly, maybe…

“Hello?” he tried, face all but pressed against the door. “Hello, can anyone hear me?” He was relieved to find his voice had returned to him, the tightening of his throat dissipating at the prospect of company and refreshment. But still there was no answer. Frowning, he pressed his ear flat against the door, trying to make out the sounds from within.

That was when the screaming started.

He recoiled as though he’d been slapped across the face, immediately every bit as terrified, as vigilant as he’d been before. Someone behind the door was _shrieking_ , screaming for their _life_ , an earsplitting and bloodcurdling wail of horror and pain. It was growing impossibly louder by the second, ringing in his ears as though there’d been no door, no walls between them. His brain told him to run away, run as fast as his tired legs would take him, but his feet were rooted firmly to the ground in the sort of freezing behavior deer exhibited just before being struck by semis on the highway.

James didn’t know what it was—the fact he was the only one nearby, the unnatural feel of his surroundings, or maybe just that the voice screaming itself raw was _female_ —but he found himself acting before his mind could process the idea. There was a brick in his hand, though he couldn’t remember picking it up, and he sent it sailing into the window with an impassioned heave. He had expected a few cracks, at best, maybe the beginnings of chipping if he was lucky. A store clerk by trade, it wasn’t as though he had the sort of physical wherewithal to be breaking into buildings for recreation. The window shattered, sending shards cascading onto the concrete below. And just like that, the bar’s front opened to him like some gaping maw, screaming, screaming, _screaming_ for help. Avoiding the jagged teeth of glass still clinging to the pane, he eased himself in, ready to…

Neely’s was empty. Utterly and completely deserted, save for a bare bulb hanging from the ceiling, swinging in rhythm with the static whine of an old handheld radio on the bar.

For a moment, he could do nothing more than stare at the radio as it crackled and squealed. Had he really mistaken _that_ for a human cry of agony? Of fear? He reached over with a shaking hand, turning it off with a sharp, twisting click. Once more the silence crashed over him, no more comforting than it had been before. It was only slowly that he allowed himself to sink down into one of the barstools, his legs threatening to simply go out beneath him.

 _What was happening_?

He dropped his head down into his arms, closing his eyes, hunching his shoulders, smelling the old smoky wood. His heart was still pounding in his ears, churning like waves in a storm, yet everything froze for an instant as he caught a whiff of something other than dust and ash and stale beer. He knew that perfume.

Tentatively, so very tentatively, he lifted his eyes from where he’d hidden them in the crook of his arms. Had that piece of paper been in front of the radio when he’d come in? Had his brain been so addled with adrenaline and fear that he simply hadn’t noticed it? It didn’t seem likely, and yet there it was.

He took the paper in hand without a second thought, unfolding its careful crease only for a heavy brass key to clatter onto the bar in front of him. “WOODSIDE APARTMENTS” read the engraving on the side of the key. “ _I’m waiting_ ,” read the curling handwriting on the paper, perfectly matching the script he’d seen so many times before on shopping lists taped to the refrigerator and tear-stained medical forms thrown onto the floor.

“Mary?” he asked himself, pulse heavy and hurried for entirely different reasons, now. She really _was_ in the town, then—she _had_ to be, how else could he have found the note? Had he been somehow mistaken about those past few years? He had read stories about people erroneously pronounced dead, people who had to dig themselves up out of their own graves to find their way back home, but…

Woodside was close. The key was weighty and cold in his hand, slowly warming as he pressed it between his fingers. There wasn’t time to think or to worry, there wasn’t time to dwell on maybes or possibilities. Mary was waiting for him, only a few yards away, somewhere in the apartment complex they’d passed by so many times on their way to grab a bite to eat before sightseeing.

His thighs were tight with exertion, still he found it in himself to jog the last few feet to the gate. When the key fit into the lock, the most bizarre sense of relief crashed over him, tempered with sharp little stabs of dread emanating from somewhere in his chest. It swung open as easily as a dream, and he all but ran into the lobby. “Mary?” he called, undeterred by the pitch darkness of the first floor, ignorant of the overstuffed mailboxes on the wall, blind to the blatant rot and disrepair of the building. “Mary, honey?” The door to the first floor hallway was locked tight, barely budging even when he threw his full weight against it.

A crash came from overhead; he took the stairs three at a time until he reached the second floor landing, throwing the door open wide in a hero’s grand entrance. There too, was darkness, all consuming—unforgiving. But there was something else too, just beyond his grasp.

“Mary?” he called again, unconcerned with disturbing tenants or their peace, “Are you here?” He didn’t like the hint of despair his voice had taken on, not one bit. The carpeting beneath his feet was running threadbare, doing little to muffle his staggered steps as he wandered through the hall. A corridor branched off to the north, and as he glanced down it, a door creaked open on its hinges, somehow inviting in its finality.

“ _Come on_ ,” came a voice, as welcome—as _musical—_ as the refrain of a childhood lullaby, causing his knees to go weak beneath him. 

_Mary_. 

He tore down the short hall, careening into the room like a train off its tracks. “Mary,” he started, feeling his eyes begin to well and his throat begin to tighten, “Is it really—” 

“ _I just love this place…_ ” There she was, as beautiful as he remembered, hair clipped up and lips curved into something secret and wonderful. He remembered that day so perfectly. The old videotape didn’t do it any justice. 

The ancient television set crackled, occasionally sending the screen snowy or uneven, his late wife’s face and voice warping with static tears. He walked over to it, heart heavy with confused disappointment as he dropped into the overstuffed armchair positioned in front of the screen. He could see her face much better, now that he was so close to the television set. He could hear the laughter in her voice. He could see the joy in her eyes. 

James realized he was crying long before she reached up to cover the first cough. It was quiet at first, his tears silent as they cut running paths down his cheeks, darkening the denim of his pants in tiny, unimportant drops. But the tape froze, the film caught in its runners or the VCR jammed with dust, and Mary’s face doubled and quadrupled before him. “ _James…”_ the audio crackled. “ _James…James…James…”_ His chest wracked with sobs, loud and messy.

Why had he done this? Why had he come all this way, knowing that she was gone—lost to him forever? She had been stolen from him, stolen by that damned disease, and now someone thought it funny to rub it in his face and watch him squirm. It was cruel. It was _inhuman_. He didn’t _deserve_ any of this…

It wasn’t until he took in a huge, gasping breath that he realized he was no longer alone in the room. But by the time he heard the ragged breaths and the shrill squeal of metal on metal, it was far too late to react.

The hand was heavy on the back of his neck as the taste of copper and ash filled his mouth. He tried to cry out, but his voice was choked off by the sharp wooden corner of the old television set.

And then there was only darkness.


	2. Martin St.

The poor lighting of the bathroom cast strange shadows along the planes of his face, making him seem older and gaunter than he was. He passed his hand between himself and his reflection, reassured when the skeletal pits in his cheeks morphed and shifted with the light. For a moment he remained there, hands clasping the dingy porcelain sink as he righted himself. There was a roiling in his stomach that he didn’t much like; the ancient odor of mildew and rot was doing little to quell the tempest of carsickness weighing down his gut and eyes, but he sensed the rundown bathroom and its installations were no strangers to the vomit of road-addled tourists. He cast one last glance up into the shard of a mirror, taking careful inventory of the redness of his eyes, the waxiness of his complexion, the downward curve of his mouth. He looked every bit as sick as he felt, and he felt plenty sick.

He wondered how much of it was _actually_ due to the bouncing of his car’s aging shock absorbers.

His stomach had begun to settle by then, not that it mattered much—he seriously doubted if he’d even be able to _produce_ anything to sick back up, it had been so long since last he ate—and he stepped out of the oppressive darkness, shielding his eyes against the fading light of day.

It had been what felt like lifetimes since his last (and only) visit, but the sight of Toluca on the horizon was strangely familiar… _comforting_. Somehow, he thought, leaning against the guardrail as he watched a cloud disappear behind a line of trees, the sounds of the water and the taste of the air felt almost like coming home. The thought brought a sad smile to his face, brought his hand to press unconsciously against the mat of paper pocketed over his heart.

There was a thought: _home_. How long had it been, since the house felt like a _home_? When was the last time he felt the sort of quiet peace offered by the lake and its tranquil waters?

The answer was easy and obvious enough, though he was loath to admit it. Three years. It had been three horrid, anguished years since he’d felt anything like this. Three years since life as he knew it had come to a slow and torturous end. He had plucked the photograph from his pocket before even realizing it, thumb rubbing slow, absent circles against the worn edge. It had been three years of nothing but relying on photographs and memories, old messages on voicemail machines and the lingering kiss of perfume and shampoo sunk deep into the fabric of the bed sheets. Three years since Mary had died of that damned disease.

Or so he had thought, until the letter arrived.

Her name had been on the envelope, her unmistakable cursive on the sheet folded within; “ _I’m alone there now_ ,” she had written, “ _Waiting for you_.” And so, without a second thought or a change of clothes, he’d set off for the quiet little resort town.

Now that he had arrived, though, he began to feel the first uncomfortable stab of embarrassment. He had come all that way on the drop of a dime, hoping to—what, exactly? Find his dead wife visiting one of the local shops? Watching the fog roll in across the glassy waters in Rose Water Park? But still…the letter cast all sorts of doubt in his mind.

He tapped the edge of the photograph against the railing before tucking it back into the safe folds of the letter, patting his jacket pocket for good measure. If Mary was here, he was going to find her, he’d decided that much. There weren’t _words_ to express how badly he needed to see here again, to hear her voice, to hold her close against him. These days, James thought, he would even settle for her ghost.

The map was on the driver’s seat of the car, folded into a neat rectangle atop the old blue and white leather. He snatched it up and slammed shut the door behind him, starting at a heavy and unexpected thump from the back seat. Something must’ve jostled loose during the drive—he seemed to recall, somewhere in the back of his mind, that something had been banging in the trunk whenever he took a particularly hard turn. That was odd, in and of itself…he couldn’t remember anything _else_ about the drive. But he had bigger things on his mind, after all, bigger and better things. 

The path down to the Toluca Cemetery was winding and steep, full of odd echoes and animal cries in the distance. The fog thickened as he made his way down the slope, rolling in as heavy as a lead sheet, obscuring his vision, and reducing landmarks to vague entities in the distance. He wondered if that meant there was a storm coming, hidden just beyond the horizon and waiting behind the crests of the lake’s waters.

He pushed open the cemetery gates with a full-body cringe, startled by the grating squeal of the aging hinges. There was more to it than that, of course. He didn’t like cemeteries, didn’t like gravestones or the things that they covered. The grass crunched under his feet and he shuddered against himself. There was some tiny and illogical part of him that couldn’t help but feel as though he needed to be silent, lest he wake those sleeping below. It was more apprehension than reverence—James felt little else but fear when it came to the dead and their brittle fingers.

A small sound caught his attention, sending a finger of something cold down his spine. Someone was sobbing, and none too far away, but the fog made it hard to see past the row of graves before him. It wasn’t odd if he thought on it, cemeteries were a place of mourning and grief after all, but it unsettled him all the same. A faint figure began to take shape in the mist, small and frail among the headstones, but he had already reached the other gate, had already pushed it halfway open, and so he kept walking. If it had been _him_ out there, kneeling before a marker, _he_ would want to be alone.

The gate creaked shut behind him despite how gingerly he’d handled it, the sound echoing through the fog like some ailing birdsong. He couldn’t remember having passed through this way before—really, what reason would they have had for traipsing through a cemetery on their honeymoon?—but as he walked, he found he knew the way as though by heart. None of it was familiar in the slightest, and yet he knew just when he’d be passing the old ranch, the greenhouse, the silo. Sawdust and pollen coated his sinuses and tongue, heady in the air. How very strange it all was.

A flashlight would’ve come in handy, he realized belatedly; the fog was quickly becoming ridiculous, clouding his vision almost to the point of blindness. Just a consequence of living on the water, he figured. Yet, it was still disconcerting to watch the grey swirls of mist materialize and disappear before him. It gave the empty silence of the path the tense air of a horror movie, and he wasn’t the sort for surprises.

Dirt and gravel gave way to concrete beneath his feet, the wooden fences to his sides replaced by shipping crates and dumpsters, and he knew he was getting close. The split between rural and suburban life had been fairly jarring to him, he seemed to remember, having always been one for the rush of city life. But things moved at a different pace in Silent Hill.

Slowly at first, the fog began to dissipate as he entered an underpass of sorts. It looked as though there had been some sort of construction taking place, the chain link of the walls plastered with signs warning of hazards, the concrete beyond awash with rainbows of graffiti. The floor was littered with newspapers, tacky and rotting with dampness, sticking to the soles of his shoes. If there _had_ been construction going on, no one had been paying it much mind, of late. Flecks of rust fluttered down from above, some sad mockery of snowflakes, landing in his hair and eyes and making him cough. The world opened back up around him, bringing with it a fresh wave of fog. The road beneath him was old and pitted, asphalt cracked and cratered, and while he knew full well that it had been closed off to traffic, some part of him felt obligated to hug the shoulder just in case.

Driving, of course, would’ve been the _easier_ route to take. He glanced over to his right, anxiously eying the precipitous drop into what he could only assume was a drainage ditch of sorts. There hadn’t been any issues with the streets back when they had visited before...then again…that _had_ been some time ago, and time had a nasty way of changing things for the worse.

When they had arrived, dewy-eyed newlyweds, their breath had been taken from them. Something about the little town and its charms had simply been too much to resist. The sun had been bright, the shops bustling and cheerful, the air smelling so sweetly of roses and the lake. It had been like finding a tiny piece of Paradise on Earth. They had fallen in love with it almost as quickly—almost as _passionately_ —as they had with one another. Mary had never wanted to leave.

Now, with the fog obscuring the sun and the sky threatening rain, he was saddened to find it didn’t hold the same sort of sway over him. The streets looked like any other streets, the shops and restaurants dark. Not that it was any wonder people preferred to hole themselves away in their homes instead of journeying through the dismal weather. He couldn’t blame them for that, not one bit. It wasn’t until he chanced a look toward the flower shop ahead of him that he was given a moment of pause.

“Celebrating 70 Years of Your Business!” read the banner stretched across the awning, faded by sunlight. James felt his brow furrow slightly—how could that be possible? That same sign had been hung when they last visited. …hadn’t it? He blinked hard, as if the banner was just a blur in his eye, unsurprised when he found it still hanging.

Maybe he was misremembering. The drive had been _so_ long, and he was more than just a little tired. Everything about Silent Hill was ringing familiar to him, the déjà vu likely no more than exhaustion tempered with nostalgia. Of course it was also possible that the shop owners had simply _left_ the banner for all those years, perhaps too old and frail to climb up onto the roof and remove it. He waved it off and slid his hands back into the pockets of his jeans, chuckling quietly at himself and his imagination. He was jumping at his own shadow, these days. 

As he neared the corner of Sanders and Lindsay, though, he felt his chest tighten. There was a slick of something dark on the road, standing out even in the haze of the fog, and while he normally wouldn’t have spared it a second glance, he knew at once it wasn’t motor oil.

Were those marks… _blood_?

They were certainly _red_ enough, and the size of the smear was…well, roughly human-sized, to be frank. He glanced to one end of the street and then the other, worry wrought deeply into the lines of his face. It could’ve been a trick of the light or his mind, but something seemed to be moving north of him. “Hello?” he called out, momentarily startled by the call of his echo. “Is someone there? Do you need help?” There was no response. “ _Hello_?” he tried again, taking a few tentative steps forward.

The shape in the mist slowly began to take shape as he neared it. Whoever they were, they were undoubtedly injured in some way—if the blood wasn’t sign enough, then their ungainly shambling was. More to the point, he could _hear_ them now, a low whine creeping its way to his ears, making the hair on the back of his neck stand on end. “Wait!” James called, quickening his pace to meet them. So absorbed by the figure lurking just ahead, he failed to notice the second pool of blood. His foot stuck, then slipped, and he caught himself with a hard, scraping impact to his elbows. The blood was cooling and tacky, almost viscous as he startled back upright. “Eugh…” the front of his jacket was stained ruddy black, his palms and elbows coated and sticky. The sight alone was enough to turn his stomach, but the _smell_ …

There was no way a human could lose that much blood and live. There was just _no way_.

“ _James!_ ”

That was Mary’s voice. His mouth ran dry as the thought fully registered in his head. That was _Mary’s voice_.

His questions were all forgotten in an instant, replaced with a burgeoning sense of urgency. Everything jumbled together in his mind, forming a maelstrom of flashing thoughts: the blood, the groaning, the shaking limp. And that was Mary’s voice, it was her, it was _her_! And there was _so much blood_.

“Mary?!” his voice came out tight, strained. James felt his heart might burst through his chest, but he broke into a graceless sprint to meet her. “ _Mary_ ,” like a prayer, now, reverent and awed and perhaps just a little fearful. The fog was so thick, but he was nearing her, could almost make out the first details of her…

“ _James!_ ”

The voice was coming from below him. Not in front of him.

“Wh…what the…?” He might’ve missed it if he wasn’t looking, toppled off against the curb like any other piece of refuse on the street. But the radio crackled and buzzed, emitting a low, squealing whine before her voice came through again.

“ _James!_ ” the radio called; “ _James!_ ” it pled. He bent down to pick it up, examining it with unveiled confusion. If _this_ was where the voice was coming from, then what was he chasing after?

He looked back up to find he wouldn’t have long to find out—the shadowy form was approaching _him_ , now, its stride markedly off. How could he have mistaken it for Mary? It drew nearer, and the thought was replaced with something much, much worse.

How could he have mistaken it for _a person_?

Its shape was vaguely human, he supposed, but its legs were too long, its spine too fluid. Translucent skin seemed to trap it within itself, arm-like appendages squirming and fighting to break free. But it had no face. And he could hear its choked breathing, nothing more than a wet scream coming from the gaping maw in its chest.

He ran.

Simply turned on his heel and fled back the way he’d come, putting as much distance between himself and the _thing_ as he could, turning down the first street he passed; he didn’t stop until he had to, lungs tight. He tucked himself into the dark space between buildings, shielding himself with shadow. Whatever it was, it didn’t move quickly…he’d seen that much already, but still. It wasn’t worth the risk.

His head pounded horribly, disbelief blooming into something much more sinister just behind his eyes. This wasn’t real…it _couldn’t_ be real. He was having some sort of hallucination or waking nightmare, he would wake up any minute now, soaked with cold sweat, and the images and sensations and smells would slip from between his fingers and dissolve into nothingness over a cup of coffee and the newspaper.

Right?

The scrapes on his palms and wrists ached dully as the blood on his jacket began to congeal into a gelatinous mess. If this was a nightmare, it was certainly a convincing one. James pressed his back to the brick wall behind him, slowly sliding down until he was sitting on the cold ground of the alleyway. His nerves were jangled, but he felt the strangest numbness begin to overtake him—numbness from the chill of the fog, from disbelief and shock. He let his chin loll onto his chest, eyes closing as he took the first real deep breath he’d allowed himself since first stepping foot in town.

A faint vibration in his hands preceded a muted little crackling noise; his brow furrowed as he remembered the radio clutched in his hand. Peeking back up to where his arms rested atop his knees, he watched the radio with deep suspicion and concern. It hissed back to life, garbled and tinny against his palm. “ _James…_ ” it said again, the voice now infinitely softer, almost as though it knew he was hiding. His grip tightened and he brought the device to his face, inspecting it curiously. He hadn’t heard her voice in _so long_.

Silence fell across the line, nothing but static silence filling the alley. Wetting his lips, James frowned, trying to make sense of a great many things at once. “Mary?” he tried, talking into the speaker as one might a walkie-talkie.

“Ja…y…il m…?” He knit his brow, leaning in closer to the radio, trying to parse what it was saying. The static was thick as the fog overtaking the streets, making it impossible to make sense of the lilting voice beneath. “I’m…ing fo…oodsi…tment…”

James lifted his head at that, turning the radio over in his hands. _Woodside Apartments?_ Could that have been what she said? Carefully, he peered around the corner of the alley; the apartment complex in question was nearby, maybe a five-minute walk from his hiding place, not even half a block away.

But…that _thing_ was out there somewhere, staggering in the mist. Had he been armed with so much as a plank of wood, James thought he might still have reservations. He let the crown of his head fall back against the brick wall again, staring up into the unending sky.

He had already made the decision, of course; he’d known from the very moment her voice crackled over the faulty radio wave. Before he could talk himself out of it, he took to his feet, ignoring the muddiness of his pants. If Mary was here—and she _had to be_ —he wasn’t about to leave her alone with the town’s monstrous infestation.

Through the fog, it was next to impossible to make out the complex’s location. It was rolling in so thick and low that it had to be an anomaly, cloaking objects from view until he was all but on top of them. Twice his shoes caught on unseen debris in the gutter, causing him a fair amount of alarm. But the street had grown eerily quiet once more, adding to the bizarre dream-like quality of his surroundings. If memory served, he was coming up on the apartments…soon there would be a chain-link fence on his right, cordoning the building off from non-residents. The interior would be safe, full of people and light and Mary’s laughter, and he would shrug off the strange events of the morning as nothing more than stress-induced paranoia.

As he made his way toward the apartments, another figure began taking shape in the mist. Once bitten, twice shy; James knew _immediately_ that whatever it was, it was not another person. He froze where he stood, feet wrought to the pavement. Any second now it would see him, it would lunge and stagger after him, chase him down until his legs and lungs gave out. The thought struck him that perhaps he could outrun it. After all, his strides were longer and smoother than the jerky movements of the creature’s legs.

His stomach twisted into knots as he watched it. Why wasn’t it moving? It had pursued him so furiously, before…

James began to walk again, footsteps light and careful. He inched past the horrible, fleshy thing, lungs burning as he held his breath. It had no face, he remembered, which meant it had no _eyes_. It wasn’t seeing him. Still, he didn’t let himself exhale until he had put a few yards of cement between them. Woodside slowly came into view and the first tiny wave of relief washed over him.

And then the radio crackled back to life. “ _James!_ ” it shrieked, the voice on the other end distorted by static, “ _Where are you?! I’m waiting! I’m waiting for you! Please come to me! Do you hate me? Is that why you won’t come? James? James! Please hurry! Are you lost? I’m here! I’m waiting nearby, James!_ ”

In the distance, the thing swung its body to face him, lurching forward with unnatural speed. _The sound!_ It couldn’t see him, but it could _hear_ …

Fight-or-flight took over, dulling his movements and memories; some part of him must’ve understood, heaving the radio in a long arc in the opposite direction as he ran for the complex’s doors. He didn’t— _couldn’t_ —look back as he sprinted, peeling into the first opening in the gates he could find. There was a terrible moment where the front door wouldn’t open, a moment where he wondered if it was the sort of building you had to buzz into, but another adrenaline-fueled yank sent the door careening open.

There were no lights on in the lobby, no people milling about, but all James could think of was locking the door behind him. He pushed it shut with a shove of his shoulder, only mildly reassured by the heavy _thunk_ of the locking mechanism as it closed.

He fell back against the peeling wallpaper, heart pounding so heavily he could feel the throbbing up through his eyes. “M-Mary?” he called, dismayed at how little his voice sounded, how shaky. “Mary!” he called again.

The only answer was the echo of his own voice, ringing sadly up the stairwell. _Mary! Mary! Mary…_

But he had _heard her_. She had been reaching out to him, begging him to come find her. She was waiting.

When he felt confident his legs wouldn’t give way under his weight, James started for the stairs. They were old, rickety things, the sort that afforded just enough space of open air between each step that one could see through them as they made their ascent, could see exactly where and how they would fall, if their foot slipped on glossy metal.

Camouflaged in graffitied shadows, he nearly missed the door to the second floor hallway. And why _was_ it so dark? Had the power gone out? Had there been some sort of accident? It would certainly explain why things were so quiet in the town…it did _less_ to explain why the fine hairs were standing up on the back of his neck. The hallway itself was almost too dark to navigate, illuminated only by the blinking red EXIT sign above his head and a dull, sickly yellow glow from somewhere ahead.

If Mary was here, she would be in the light.

He quickened his pace as best he could given his current physical state, approaching the northern hallway with burgeoning hope.

The scream caught him off guard. It was the cry of an injured animal in the night—loud and shrill, freezing the blood as it sang of agony and fear. His head immediately turned toward the source, somehow unsurprised to find it was coming from the illuminated hallway. He swallowed hard around his surprise, the rational parts of his mind pulling him back towards the staircase, back towards the exit, back to the observation deck and the old car and the pothole-riddled road he’d come in on.

Curiosity, though…curiosity had other ideas.

Had it been a woman’s scream— _Mary’s_ scream—he would’ve charged in, guns blazing. There was no question in his mind, as far as that was concerned. Yet it hadn’t been a woman’s voice crying out in the darkness, but a man’s. Maybe he needed help, James reasoned, slowly edging toward the open door. Maybe he knew what was going on around here…Maybe he had seen Mary.

He put his fingers to the door marked 208, gingerly pushing it open. The room was pitch dark, save for the flickering glow of an old television set. For a moment his hand searched the wall for a light switch, toggling it to no avail. He felt something was off, somehow, but could quite put his finger on it…the static snow on screen hissed so loudly and so overwhelmingly that it was hard to concentrate on much else. Still, his stomach was churning with anxiety and fear. He had _just_ heard the scream, there hadn’t been enough _time_ for anyone to leave the apartment…

In the light of the television, something glinted on the floor. Perplexed, he bent down, brow furrowing as his fingers skimmed the old brass key. There was something written on it in thinly embossed letters, but it was impossible to make out in the dark by touch alone. He was just preparing to straighten back up when the smell hit him.

Heavy and sour, it bowled him over with a sudden impossible intensity. It filled his nostrils and his skull, causing his gorge to rise and his head to spin. How he had missed it before, he had no idea, but it struck him then like a ten-ton weight.

“ _What the_ …” he gagged, hand clamping over his mouth in a futile attempt to ward away the nausea. The television flashed, sending the room into sharp relief for only a second, and he felt his knees turn to water. “ _My God_.”

The body lay slumped in the armchair, arms draped over the sides, head lolled onto the open and exposed cage of its chest. His jaw went numb, mouth filling with saliva as he felt the bile rise to his throat.

He lurched back into life, feet tangling uselessly as he bolted from the room. The hallway seemed so tight now, so long. Everything felt _too_ real, the world taking on new life and color in the dark. Things were moving with the horrific slowness of a nightmare; his steps were bringing him no farther from the room and its gruesome contents and his heart was pounding and choking the breath from him. The fibers of the carpeting were slick and frictionless beneath his feet, adding to the helplessness of the situation.

It was an eternity before he reached the door to the stairs, flinging it open with reckless abandon, the action wild and jerky enough to send a bolt of agony down the back of his arm. He all but tumbled down the stairs, crashing to the foyer floor and charging through the front doors with shoulders steeled and squared. The muted light of day rushed over him, causing his pupils to constrict almost painfully, and he only just got to the chain link fence before his resolve let go and he forcibly heaved the contents of his stomach out onto the asphalt. His breath came in short, ragged bursts, burning hot with fear and acid, catching in his throat and lungs until he felt he might suffocate. Extremities shaking like tree limbs in a hurricane, he tried to flee down the street, desperate to put as much space between himself and Woodside as he possibly could.

The front doors of the complex burst open behind him with a bang so resonant he had to cover his ears.

And then the footsteps. Slow. Heavy. _Close_.

He found he could still run, after all.

The sky began to swirl midnight black around him, growing ever darker with each breath he took, but he barely noticed. He ran and ran and _ran_ , wanting so badly to call out for help or mercy or God—all three of which he found himself in dire need of, just then—but his lungs strained with the effort to pull breath in. He was drowning in air, smothered by his own exhaustion and terror. 

And still the thing was behind him. He couldn’t hear over the rush of his pulse in his ears, couldn’t see in the darkness, skin too numb from cold to feel, but he knew it all the same. It wasn’t human, _couldn’t be_ human, not the way it had decimated the poor soul in the armchair, not the way it electrified the air with the smell of ozone and blood. The pavement under his feet seemed to shake with the weight of the beast, sending sharp vibrations of fear up through his legs.

To his left, an alley opened in the darkness. He jagged, body heaving with the effort of the motion, throwing himself through the intersection in some instinctual vie for survival. His legs had taken on some strange life of their own, his feet numb and loose, but still he ran as fast and as hard as his wheezing body would let him. Adrenaline could do frightening things to a man—frightening and amazing. Something caught his ankle and he fell gracelessly to the cement, but he was back up and moving before he could register the shape of the shrubbery or what it meant for the path he was taking.

Behind him, he could feel the air growing thicker. There was a horrible grinding noise filling the town, somehow higher and more brittle than nails on a chalkboard. Something was being dragged, something heavy and metal and blunt, and James had little interest in discovering just what it was. If he could make it to the other side of the street he could escape the thing. He could keep zigzagging through town forever, if that was what it took; facing the thing behind him meant death or _worse_ , he felt it deep within his bones. Any second now the street would open up and he could weave his way between buildings or over a fence, one step closer to safety.

Only the street _didn’t_ open up. There _was_ no escaping. He had reached a dead end.

“No,” he panted, all wide eyes and disbelief as he spun around, looking for something— _anything_. To his left, he could just make out the shape of a porch, the angles of a door, and he all but leapt up the front steps. “No, no, no, nononono _nonononono_ …” he chanted, a sad mantra hanging in the air as he fumbled with the locked door. Fog wrapped around him like prison chains, making it hard to pound on the door and nigh impossible to cry out to the hypothetical inhabitants safely hidden behind.

His mouth and nose filled with the scent of hot, rotting meat. Suddenly little more than leaden weights, his arms dropped to his sides, shoulders slouching and resigned. There were white-hot pricks rippling down his spine, warming and freezing him in the same breath. There was something standing behind him.

For just a moment—one brief, surreal moment—where he thought he had begun to drool. There was a wetness on his face making his lips slick and his tongue heavy, but when he looked down, he saw only red. It wasn’t until he coughed, spraying the door with a fine mist of blood, that he felt it. The odd protrusion pushing the fabric of his shirt out, making his stomach look distended and _wrong_. When the blade slid back out of him, he crumpled, limbs numb and spine severed; his weight collapsed into strong hands, and he choked back a wet sob.

The rush of air was exhilarating in some strange and morbid way. It gave him the oddest sense of falling, as if he’d taken a running leap from the lip of the observation deck, plunging down through fog to meet the icy waters below.

He crashed into the trashcans back-first, folding in on himself like a ragdoll a child had flung to the side. Already his breath was becoming labored, lungs filling with fluid as his body threatened to drown itself. Blurred and swimmy with blood and tears, he watched as the thing approached him, boots thick and patchy with mold, monstrous knife dragging along the pavement.

In the distance, there were sirens, muted under the horrible grinding of metal on cement. His vision began to tunnel as he felt himself falling, falling, _falling_ through the concrete. And he knew he should’ve been scared, then, should’ve been _terrified_ , but he found he couldn’t be. It wasn’t the fall that killed you, after all. It was the sudden stop.


	3. The Road Home

He didn’t like the look of the eyes staring back at him in the mirror. They were red and swollen, weighted down by sleepless nights. They looked nothing like his own, he thought—but then again, he supposed he’d seen better days. James pushed himself up from the sink to keep himself from dwelling on his peaked appearance, stepping back out into the light of the observation deck.

Until the crisp air hit his face, he hadn’t realized he’d been holding his breath, and he breathed deep the scent of the lake and its pine forest. He had been on the road for _hours_ the ache in his back reminded him, and as much as he wanted to get to the bottom of this bizarre episode, he had a feeling he’d need to find a hotel to check into soon, if only to rest his eyes. 

The letter in his pocket was small—nothing more than a single piece of stationary tucked inside an envelope—but it weighed on him all the same. He couldn’t bring himself to look at it again, couldn’t imagine pulling out the photograph and seeing her face smiling so serenely back at him.

Mary had said that she would be waiting for him in their “special place,” but the whole _town_ had been their special place. Maybe she had meant Rose Water, maybe Lakeview, but either way the observation deck’s entrance to Nathan Avenue was closed and he had quite the trip ahead of him. Rose Water was closer, if memory served, so he would start looking there. Even if Mary _wasn’t_ there, maybe there would be some sort of clue as to her whereabouts.

He walked back to the car to grab his map, casting one last wistful glance toward the water before bending down to the seat. And that was odd…he could’ve _sworn_ he’d left the map on the front seat. He’d pulled it from the glove compartment, refolded it into a neat little rectangle, and set it on the driver’s seat before he’d left for the bathroom, knowing full well he’d forget it otherwise.

 _Hadn’t_ he?

James grumbled to himself, raking his fingers through his hair in frustration. He climbed onto the seat after rifling through the foot well; he proceeded to scour the car, ducking his head under the dashboard, peeking between the seats, searching the back. And still, the map was nowhere to be found. But he’d _brought_ it, and he _had_ it. He _knew_ he did.

He got out of the car again, scratching the back of his neck in tired contemplation. He’d been on the road too long to be dealing with this. Had his last visit to Silent Hill been more recent, maybe he would’ve been able to wave it off and carry on without it…but their honeymoon had been so long ago, now— _lifetimes_ , it felt like. There was no way he’d be able to find Rose Water on his own, and he was in no frame of mind to be begging directions from strangers.

Feeling like an imbecile or a child or whatever lay between the two, he took to his hands and knees, peering underneath the car. No luck. He patted at his pockets only to be further disappointed. Of course, he _had_ left the door open a crack as he’d freshened up in the restroom—something had begun to rot under one of the back seats, likely a piece of produce that had rolled away after a shopping trip, and he didn’t want the smell to build up—so perhaps the wind had nabbed it. 

He began walking around the car, eyes peeled for anything that might’ve so much as resembled the travel agency map. When he reached the trunk he paused, brow furrowing. There were long, clean tracks in the dirt and dust that had accumulated on the trunk’s hatch. Handprints, it looked like, but he hadn’t put anything in the trunk before leaving…he hadn’t even packed a bag before taking to the highway. He pulled the latch, wracking his memory for what he might’ve stashed away, but still nothing came to mind.

His confusion was _immense_ , then, when he pushed the hatch of the trunk open and found it full. How had he forgotten _this_? Whatever it was, it was fairly large and lumpy, covered by a white sheet of some sort. The stench of rot was horribly thick, making him wonder if maybe his earlier theory had been wrong, if maybe something had been lost back _here_. Still waiting for the cogs to click into place, he reached for the sheet and tried pulling it back, finding that he had to fight it. A fold had caught under something heavy, it seemed, and…

James slowly shut the trunk.

Without another word, he opened the driver’s side door and slid into the seat. When he turned the key in the ignition, his hands shook as though he were freezing. He shifted the gear into reverse, pulled out from where he’d parked, and made a sharp U-turn to head back the way he’d come in. 

Mary wasn’t in Silent Hill. She wasn’t waiting for him in the park or the hotel or anywhere else. Mary was dead, she was gone, and coming to this place had been a horrible decision.

The back of his tongue had begun to taste of bile, his mouth filling with saliva in preparation of losing his breakfast. Why had he done this? Why had he done _any_ of this? He had to go home.

 _Now_.

He drove back out, watching the observation deck begin to shrink in his rearview mirror. Some lesser part of him almost expected some looming figure to appear, chasing him down as he tried to make his escape. It would emerge from the fog, huge and hulking and covered in blood…

Had he turned back to the road a second later, there was no way he would’ve hit the brakes in time. The car skidded to a shaky halt as he jammed his foot to the pedal, physically recoiling from the steering wheel as he did so.

In front of him, the road had simply…ceased to be. It was almost as though some sort of catastrophe had struck when he wasn’t looking, the world disappearing into a jagged maw of rock and oblivion. James thought his heart might give out, it was pumping so fast. This wasn’t right—none of this was right.

Throwing the gear into reverse, he swung back around onto the safety of the observation deck. And the road to Nathan Avenue had opened.

Was that _possible?_ Hadn’t it just been gated off?

James rubbed his eyes with the heels of his hands, trying to make sense of what he was seeing. Maybe it _had_ been open all along, maybe he had just been mistaken, but then why wouldn’t he have planned on driving into town, to begin with…?

There wasn’t time to think. He needed to get away from this place.

Back in drive, he headed through the underpass, waves of cool relief crashing over him as he found his path unobstructed. On Nathan, it was a straight shot out of town, and only about ten miles until Paleville. If he really booked it, he could be long gone in a matter of minutes, and he wouldn’t even have to glance into the rear view mirror.

He pressed the gas pedal against the floor, leaning forward slightly as the car burst forward in a rush of acceleration. There were tears in his eyes now, blurring his vision and doubling the images in the windshield, but it didn’t matter. None of it mattered. The arm of the speedometer slowly climbed higher, the buildings around him melting together into brownish smears outside the windows. Mary was dead. She was dead, dead, dead, and she was never coming back, no matter how hard he looked for her, no matter where he went. She was gone.

The tires slipped as Nathan Avenue crumbled into nothingness beneath him.


	4. The Church

The face in the mirror was a stranger’s. Even on his worst nights his eyes were never that bloodshot, his skin never so waxy, the creases of his forehead never so defined. He looked like a walking corpse, or worse yet, some forgotten specter left to wander the earth for all eternity. He had driven for without rest for…well it was hard to tell, really. The damn car was worse off than _he_ was these days, its clock perpetually stuck at 3:12, the radio picking up nothing but static, giving him no way to measure time outside of the rise and fall of the sun, the blurry lettering of exit signs, the broken white lines on the asphalt. Throw in the unpleasant stickiness of the leather headrest against his neck and the awful smell of rot coming from under one of the seats, and by the time he’d parked in the lot of the observation deck, he’d given a good thirty seconds of thought to pushing the hunk of scrap over the edge and into the lake to just _be done with it all_.

Screwing shut his eyes, he reached up to scrub at his face with his hands, trying to jar himself from the strange fugue threatening to overtake him. He was overtired from the events of the past few days, the world around him in turn feeling somehow _too_ real and yet as impossible as a lingering dream.

He needed to keep moving, lest he fall asleep…or wake up. At this juncture, he wasn’t entirely sure which would be worse. The crick in his neck told him he was very much conscious, very much awake, but how many people went searching for their dead wives, outside of nightmares?

James could already feel a faint draft of air leaking through the shoddy door, bracingly chilly compared to the stifled bathroom. He would go back to the car, grab the map, head into the town proper…but _then_ what? 

His hand was on the door handle when he noticed the eyes looking back at him. 

He jumped as though he’d been smacked, pulling back in shock. The poster had been tacked up at eye level, adding to the illusion that he wasn’t alone. It had been ripped and shredded with time, only slivers of the woman’s face still visible, but those _eyes_.

 _“RETURNING TO HEAVEN’S NIGHT!”_ Read the top of the advert, _“One night only! The long-awaited return of Lady M…”_ Beyond that, the poster was torn too badly to be legible. There was still something about those eyes, though…something uncanny. They could’ve been Mary’s, he thought, if they weren’t full of that strange, beckoning light. The last time he’d seen her, all those years ago, there had _been_ no light in her eyes. He found he had to fight the urge to reach out and touch the image.

Instead, he stepped out into the cool lake air, suddenly more alert than he had been in a long, long time. His body thrummed with an odd energy, likely the result of too little sleep and too much thought, and he cast only the quickest of glances toward the dark waters of Toluca before taking the steps two at a time to reach the path into town.

There was a heavy fog rolling in from over the water, making it difficult to see ahead of him. He made the trek one step at a time, testing the ground before putting his weight fully on his foot. Maybe there was some sort of storm looming just over the horizon, because the town had been cheerfully bright when last he’d visited—when last _they’d_ visited. Slowly the trees began to thin out around him, the gravel leveling out to dust and dirt. The echoes of the lake still rang out clearly around him, giving the area a sense of eeriness.

Until now, the path had seemed somehow familiar to him…more likely than not because it had been a straight shot from the observation deck, lacking in forks or alternate trails. As he approached the wrought iron gates, though, he realized with a quiet sort of frustration that he had no idea where he was going. He patted down the pockets of his jacket, realizing only then that he’d left the map back at the observation deck, folded up on the front seat of the car.

Was this the cemetery? He thought he could recall seeing the plot on the map when last he’d given it a glance; he and Mary had never had any _reason_ to explore this part of the town, and yet the thought had come to him unheeded. Without ever having been there, he _knew_ that he stood on the threshold of the graveyard. James pushed the gate open and it seemed to confirm his suspicion, the fog rolling in thick waves over headstones and dried-out bouquets.

He frowned, pulling his jacket tighter around him as he walked. James was not, by any stretch of the imagination, comfortable in cemeteries. There was something so distressing in thinking about all of the people lying just below his feet, eyelids shriveled up until they were staring wide-eyed and unseeing at any who so dared to tread upon them. The sooner he could get out of there, the better, but he absolutely could not see another exit or entrance, given the state of the weather. He was considering simply turning around and trying to find another way, perhaps doubling back completely to revisit his car and see if he could do anything about the barrier that had closed Nathan Avenue off to him…before a soft sound caught his attention.

It was only just within his earshot, quiet and mournful in a way that sent the back of his neck into creeping gooseflesh. A whisper too low to parse but too _human_ to be ignored. The poisonous seeds of his fear took root in the dark recesses of his mind, growing like ivy until he was suffocating under the weight of his own terror.

The dead _knew_ he was there. They watched him from their dusty tombs, peeping through blades of browning grass until such a time that he wandered too close to one of their brittle hands, skeletal fingers beckoning like reeds in the wind. There was no hiding from them, no _escaping_ them, and even as he quickened his pace he thought he could feel a rattling breath against his ear. “ _Why?_ ” it asked him, growing in volume and fervor until it was all but shrieking, “ _Why? Why why whywhywhy did you_ do _this to me?!_ ”

His skin burnt and froze in even turn, an uncomfortable buzz behind his eyes turning into a spiraling warning siren. “I didn’t do _anything…_ leave me alone…” he said, voice muted by fear, the words thick on his tongue. “ _Leave me ALONE!_ ” In his mind’s eye, he could see them reaching, waiting to drag him down, down, _down_ for all eternity, until he was just as hollow and lifeless as they were.

Lungs tightening with each and every step, he screwed his eyes shut against whatever might have been looming towards him in the fog; he charged as a frightened animal might, having no bearings or idea of where to go, his one and only thought _escape_. He crashed into something soft and pliant, the impact enough to knock him off his feet with a taut, wavering sound of shock.

“ _I’m sorry!_ ” came a voice, infinitely smaller, frailer than his own. “ _I’m sorry!_ ”

He looked up in surprise at the response, immediately taken aback. Dead people didn’t typically _talk_ , the rational part of his brain reminded him—though they didn’t typically _write letters_ , either, it prodded—the tight coil of fear between his ribs unraveling until he felt little else but embarrassment. “I…” James began, his mouth still far too dry, throat too constricted.

The girl had fallen too, it seemed, or had at least been on the ground when he’d knocked into her; behind a dark, blunt curtain of hair, her features were large with youth and terror. She stared at him as though _he_ were something to run away from, and given how he’d been behaving, James couldn’t really fault her that.

“… _oh_ ,” he managed, a pathetic explanation for what had just transpired. “N…no, no, _I’m_ sorry, I…” His mouth continued to move, though he couldn’t muster the words to defend himself.

In front of him, she trembled, legs knock-kneed as she pushed herself back and away from him, almost flush with a small, granite grave marker. There was no color in her face, save for two patches of red burning away at the very center of her cheeks, speaking volumes of her own horror and humiliation. She continued to stare as though he were some knife-wielding maniac, some unspeakable monster, and James had the distinct notion that she was only seconds away from tears.

“I’m sorry,” he said again, voice becoming steadily more even as he eased himself back up from the brittle grass, shaking his head slowly. “That was…stupid of me, I…I don’t know what got into me.” He reached down and offered her his hand, only for her to pull away with even more intensity. “I didn’t mean to—” 

She pushed herself back up from the ground, head down and shoulders hunched as she wrapped her arms around herself defensively. There was something about her posture that came across as dangerous, he thought, something reminiscent of a small animal backed into a corner.

“I’m…I’m actually _really_ lost,” he tried, even as she began edging away from him. “I forgot my map, and I don’t…” James released a pent-up breath, pulse still churning inside of him like a tempest. “Do you know how to get into Silent Hill?”

The girl didn’t raise her eyes from the dirt, didn’t so much as speak another word. She simply lifted her arm, the too-long sleeve of her sweater pulling back as she pointed towards the west, the path beyond her still hidden away by the curtain of fog.

“Are you sure?” James asked, “I don’t see—”

But without another word, she was gone, disappearing into the mist as quickly and as completely as a mirage. He couldn’t blame her, really…she had frightened _him_ so badly, in her mourning, but _he_ had gone and _terrified_ her.

He watched the space she had vanished into for a moment, leaving nothing in her wake but the faintest swirling of fog. _Dead people_ didn’t walk around cemeteries— _the living_ did. He really _was_ tired.

James kneaded at his temples with his knuckles as he turned back the way the girl had pointed, furrowing his brow as he tried to make out something, _anything_ , through the sheet of grey. His hand absently found its way to the pocket over his heart, the shape of Mary’s letter reassuring him through the fabric. Fear now nothing more than spent adrenaline, he peered down to the tombstone the girl had tucked herself against. Years of rain and wind had smoothed out the etchings, but he could still make out the faintest imprint of a name: _Orosco_.

Pursing his lips, he shot one last look in the direction she’d fled, before continuing on. He kept his hands on his face even as he walked, trying to rid himself of the hot wash of shame that the encounter had brought. This wasn’t how he normally behaved, not at all. He was logical and contemplative, always aware of his actions and surroundings. If nothing else, he was a _rational_ being. …or so he thought.

What was he doing there, wandering the darkened cemetery? Had he really come all this way to find his _dead_ wife? He was seeing ghosts everywhere, it seemed. Maybe this was it—maybe he had finally lost his mind. All those years coping with Mary’s death, coming to terms with losing her so quickly and so _young_ to a disease so ravenous that it had torn her, him, _them_ apart and left nothing but a faint impression in the mattress of their marriage bed. Was this one of those breakdowns they talked about on daytime television?

That _had_ to be it. Some quarter-life-crisis rearing its ugly head. Nothing more, nothing less. Except for the fact that he thought he could still hear someone whispering just out of range.

The girl had been right, and before long he was greeted by another imposing pair of rusting gates. They stuck something awful, jammed by age, but he managed to force them wide open all the same. Each step away from the graveyard helped him breathe a little better, cleared his mind a little more, and after a couple of minutes, he came to wonder whether any of it had happened at all.

He didn’t like the strange, pulsating void behind his eyes. The drive had spanned on for what felt like _lifetimes_ , and he didn’t doubt for a moment that the combination of sleep deprivation, motion sickness, and latent grief was beginning to take hold of him. It was a little like being drunk, he thought. A feeling he was a little _too_ familiar with.

And yet, every breath of lake air seemed to wake him up a little more, helping to calm and cool him all at once. The lingering unease cloyed at him, deep down in the pit of his stomach, but it was easy enough to ignore now that he had put some distance between himself and the dead.

The town was just as saturated with fog as the path had been, making it nigh impossible to see. He continued forward, watching as a large figure began to take shape through the mist, at once strange in its countenance and comforting in its familiarity.

He had made a few trips to the old flower shop, during their honeymoon; it was a quaint little store run by a local family, and Mary had been _so_ charmed by the tiny pink roses they grew…But as he drew nearer, he realized something was amiss. The interior of the shop was dark, and though the glass was hazy with age, it was obvious at once that all of the shelves and displays were completely bare. It was made only stranger by the cheerful banner hanging across the shop face: Celebrating 70 Years of Your Business! The store didn’t look terribly celebratory to James. The sign was off-putting for another reason, too—he could’ve _sworn_ it had been hanging when he and Mary had been there last.

It was _that_ sort of thinking that had gotten him into trouble earlier, though. Before he could fall prey to his ruminations any longer, he continued his walk down one of the main streets. Wiltse? No, _Sanders,_ something in his mind told him, though he didn’t have the map to confirm or deny that suspicion.

The strangeness persisted. The town was called _Silent_ Hill, sure, but it had _never_ been this quiet. Usually there were people milling about, visiting shops and having lunch, enjoying the weather or heading to the amusement park. And yet he walked and walked and walked, and never passed another person.

Maybe he was _dreaming_. Here he was, in a town he’d only visited once before, searching for ghosts and losing track of time, behaving like a madman…and now the streets of the resort town were barren and silent. Dreaming would almost make sense. He would wake up any minute now, having fallen asleep in the driver’s seat of his car, parked on the observation deck. Or, better yet, curled up in bed at home, a breeze wafting through the window, no strange envelopes waiting for him on the dining room table.

As he walked, James felt a peculiar weight growing in his stomach. It was less dread and more anticipation, almost as though he was being _pulled_ in that direction. But saliva turned to bile in his mouth as the familiar shape took form in front of him. _No_. Not anymore. He had _sworn_ it.

He hooked a sharp right down the main road, passing up Neely’s while prolonging his view of it. James didn’t go to places like that, nowadays. The smell of cigarette smoke and stale hops could awaken something in a man, could bring back memories best left buried. Still, even as he left the bar behind him, an uncomfortably improbable thought tugged at him: hadn’t there been a hole in the window, the last time he’d been there?

Not that it mattered—it was just another bizarre misfiring of his tired brain. Yet…as inconsequential as it was, he couldn’t get it out of his mind. There had been a _hole_ there…hadn’t there?

Lucky Jade and Big Jay’s solidified through the fog, looming like twin sentinels before him. Oh, how many times they’d eaten there, during their stay. Both restaurants’ windows were dark, even as he approached them; the doors were locked and the parking spaces empty. He was beginning to feel terribly, horribly, _impossibly_ out of place, like a child wandering the halls during class. There was an awful sensation of trespassing, despite the tourist stands and brightly colored banners.

The street continued to stretch out in front of him, businesses appearing through the darkness as he neared their doorsteps. A market, a pet store, an electronics shop, all places he had seen before. They felt _different_ now, somehow, the way even his bedroom felt different once all the lights were off and the birds ceased chirping outside the window.

He was growing rapidly more tired on his feet, his joints aching something fierce after extended disuse. The weight of his eyelids was becoming impossible to ignore, and he knew that he would need to stop soon. He needed _rest_. Already, he thought he felt himself begin to drift—not quite falling asleep, but finding himself in that thick, gauzy place between consciousness and unconsciousness, bobbing up and down in the tide of exhaustion.

 _Tide_. That was it.

His eyes snapped back open as his spine lengthened, his extremities tingling with epiphany. _The park. Rose Water Park._ Their place, their “special place,” the one that Mary’s letter had spoken of, was _Rose Water Park!_

Lungs filling with what felt like the first breath he’d ever taken, James found himself full of new energy. Even now, he could see the grotesque shapes of St. Stella’s gargoyles leering through the fog, guarding the church with their dull teeth. His feet had brought him there without him even recognizing it. His aimless wandering hadn’t been half so aimless as he’d thought—if he strained his ears, _really_ strained them, he could hear the crashing of stormy lake water against the dock.

How could he have _not_ immediately thought of Rose Water? The idea was absolutely preposterous, now, really…but he was too close to dwell on it.

Another left, and he was on Nathan Avenue, the east-most entrance to the park already within his sights. Had the road blockade not been up when he’d arrived, the trip would’ve taken him mere _seconds_. He could’ve been here minutes, hours, _days_ ago, that much closer to finding Mary. Even though his muscles screamed out in agony, he quickened his stride, all but jogging until the tarmac gave way to a cobblestone path.

“Mary?” he called out, all but two steps into the park. “ _Mary?_ ” Rose Water was large, but not so large that she wouldn’t be able to hear his voice. At least…he hoped. It _had_ been a while since he’d walked its paths, after all.

The open walkway slowly became more verdant, closing him in on either side with tall, robust shrubberies. “Mary!” he tried again, disheartened to find that the plants _did_ seem to dampen the sound. The area was much more overgrown than he’d remembered, the stone blockades guiding his way veined with thick ivy and moss. His footsteps hardly even echoed, so thick was the foliage around him, but it served to aid him in a way he hadn’t even paused to consider: the fog wasn’t able to wend its way through all of the arborous twists and turns. For the time being, he could _see_ again. 

Around him, the area opened up on all sides, expanding to grassy lawns and hidden gazebos, the remnants of leisurely afternoons couched away in the grass. He stepped over a forgotten soda can as he looked about, cupping his hands around his mouth. “Mary?”

There was no response. Still, he didn’t allow his hope to waver—once he got to the dock, there was no question that his voice would carry farther, his shouts would reach the ears of anyone in the area. This was _their place_ , after all. Her letter had said she would be here, and Mary had _always_ kept her word. 

James stepped onto the grass as something bright caught his eye. Had it not been for the magazine, he thought he might’ve missed the bench entirely, it was so wholly camouflaged by old leaves. More out of curiosity than anything else, he picked it up, making a small sound of disgust as he flicked an industrious spider from off of one of its open pages. “HOW TO BE A HAPPY COUPLE!” proclaimed the title of the article. “ _Do you_ really _love her?_ ” it continued, “ _In sickness and in health? If you_ truly _love her, then you must act. It all depends on how hard you fight for her. Whatever happens, don’t give up. Always try just one more time. Even though there may be hard times…_ ” He closed the booklet with a papery _thwap_ , letting it fall back onto the bench. 

It wasn’t advice he needed—gossip rags like that had _no idea_ what it meant to fight for someone, what the implications of “in sickness and in health” _really_ were. They were sentiments much easier written than carried out.

When things had gotten difficult between them, the most difficult things _could_ get between two people, James had acted.

The article left a sour taste in his mouth, nonetheless. It felt somehow _mocking_ , almost as if someone had left it there for the sole purpose of him stumbling across it. But that was impossible. He had to remind himself he was still tired, and exhaustion was suspicion’s closest relative.

A small set of stairs led him down towards the water, the first tendrils of fog creeping back in as he neared the dock. The greenery receded as he stepped foot onto the first plank of wood, swollen with chilly water.

In front of him, Lake Toluca stretched on to the horizon: an inky black landscape broken by crests of white foam. He walked up to the guardrail, setting his arms against the splintery wood as he leaned over, inhaling a healthy lungful of the air. The sky had begun to darken even as he stood there, the first deep roll of thunder making him at once acutely aware of the petrichor surrounding him, filling his senses with hues of deepest blues and greens. He’d never seen Toluca during a storm. To be frank, he wasn’t entirely sure he _wanted_ to.

There was nothing mystical or beautiful about rain over water, to him. Not with the way the normally serene waters were churning, slamming up against the dock with undignified slaps. The branches of those trees and shrubs unlucky enough to be on the very edge of the park waved and thrashed as the wind picked up. Off in the distance, hidden by blustering clouds of fog, he could just barely make out the gargantuan silhouette of the abandoned church. It sat alone on an island, flanked by giant, withering pines. For a moment, and only a moment, James was seized by the awful notion that it was staring right back at him.

The town was famous for being a peaceful, calm resort, but now, as the fog and wind and thunder collided, he thought it looked more the set of a horror movie than anything else.

“Mary?” James shouted, resolve unshakeable. “ _MARY?!”_ But the howling of the wind swallowed his voice up, rendering the yell as insignificant as the buzzing of a gnat. He narrowed his eyes against the raging wind, hurrying across the dock to reach the western side of the park.

Ducking back into the trees was a welcome relief from the tempest brewing over the waters, but the sudden silence filled him with melancholy, all the same. He had held such fond and beautiful memories of this place. Everything he and Mary had seen and done during their stay had been perfectly picturesque—the sort of scene that you could put on the back of a postcard to send to the family.

There had been an entire _day_ where they’d done nothing but sit out by the lake. They had arrived early in the morning, much earlier than any of the tourists or locals had been awake, sitting on the edge of the water as the sun slowly rose from behind the trees. The sky had been a million shades of purples and reds, blues and pinks, the sun gleaming brilliantly across the lake, glassy and still. They had been struck reverent by the sight, their hands brushing softly on the shoreline, fingers slowly finding and tangling in one another.

They had spread out a blanket and eaten in the park, conversation punctuated by the cheerful chirping of the birds as they began to wake and flit about, gathering for their nests. The grass had been so pristinely kept, then, the flowerbeds full of healthy blooms: tulips and lilies and roses alike. And the _butterflies_. They had been so large and so beautiful, brightly colored and alighting on every- and anything. One had come to settle on Mary’s shoulder, likely more interested in her glass of orange juice than _her_ , but she had been _so_ delighted. Even _more so_ when all of its friends had fluttered around them, marking their spread like living confetti. He could still hear that laugh, if he tried hard enough.

And even once they returned to the Lakeview Hotel that night, both sunburnt and tuckered out, they had sat in front of the wide bay window, watching as the sun dipped back below the horizon. James had never _seen_ Mary so happy.

From that moment, it had just been accepted as a fact. It was their place—their _special place_. Silent Hill. The town where they had spent their honeymoon, eons and eternities ago, when they were both so young and happy and full of life. James had promised to take her back, he had _always_ promised, but she’d gotten so sick so fast…there’d been no time.

Now there was nothing. No people, no sunshine, no beautiful scenery. Their special place had become as grey and as lifeless as…

James pushed on deeper into the park, walking up a set of rocky stairs similar to the ones he’d descended only minutes ago. The open area of this side of the park was significantly smaller, lined more with benches and fountains than grassy expanses, but even in the fading light, he spotted something that sent his stomach into knots.

There, on a small patch of browning grass, was a picnic blanket. He looked from one side of the area to the other, trying to discern whether he was truly alone. “Mary?” he tried one last time, throat scratched and raw from his earlier attempts. But there was no response. He didn’t know why he had expected any differently.

Slowly, very slowly, he approached the blanket. It became _immediately_ obvious that, despite its similarities to the blanket he and Mary had used, there had not been any lunch eaten there. A large, imposing book laid open atop it, weighing it down against the wind. Its pages blew this way and that, and James was startled to see that they had all been dyed the same shade of red. James crouched over it, setting a finger against the pages to keep them still. The writing was almost alien to him, English broken up by strange sigils and runes. “Ritual,” was easy enough to read, as were “God,” “holy,” and “awaken.” But then there were the symbols…they made his eyes hurt with their unfamiliar shapes, and yet… _impossibly,_ he could’ve sworn he recognized one. “Rebirth.”

He reached out to close the book, the color of the pages vibrating strangely in his head, making him feel oddly dizzy, almost as if someone was trying to rifle around in his brain. Slamming shut the book seemed to ease the discomfort, but there was still a bizarre tingling in his hand where he touched it. “Crimson Ceremony,” read the emblazoned cover, sending an involuntary shudder down his spine. To its left were two other objects: an ornate goblet carved out of some dark, smooth stone, and a small vial of a milky white liquid.

They were for the ritual detailed in the book. He knew this instantly, without even having to think on it. Against his better judgment, James reached out, picking the fragile vial up and carefully removing its seal. Brow furrowed, he swirled it around, watching the way it clung to the glass, far too viscous to be any liquid he was familiar with. Curiously, _instinctively_ , he raised it to his nose, taking a quick, inquisitive sniff. Cloves, maybe? Something flowery and familiar, though he couldn’t quite put his finger on it…

That’s when it all clicked into place.

James sat back up, back ramrod straight as he replaced the vial’s lid. Without another word, without another thought, he lifted the book from the blanket, tucking it under his arm as he enclosed the goblet in one hand, the chrism in the other. The wind howled around him as he stood, making his way to the park’s entrance once more. Without the weight, the blanket was picked up and hurled by the wind, fluttering like some expelled spirit to catch in a tree branch.

He heard none of it. He _saw_ none of it. The smell of the oils was still bright in his mind, dulling and sharpening his senses all at once.

How had he forgotten why he’d come to this place? How had it taken him _that_ _long_ to remember what he was there to do? All of his wandering and wondering…when it had been staring him in the face all the while.

Around him, the storm grew, darkening the sky until it was nothing but blackness, occasionally forked by bright veins of lightening. The wind whipped at him, his hair and the loose fabric of his coat battering him at every turn, and still, he felt none of it.

James simply walked in silence, a man possessed.

He reached the observation deck quicker than he had anticipated…quicker than perhaps it should’ve been _possible._ He had no recollection of passing any buildings, much less crossing through the graveyard again. When he reached out to try and retrace his steps, there was only greyness.

But his car was waiting where he’d left it, the driver’s side door still open to let out some of the smell, and he quickly popped the trunk to stash away the book, the cup, and the vial, wrapping them up neatly in a corner of the sheet laid out within.

The engine purred back to life as he turned the keys in the ignition, and he was pleased to see that the road to Nathan Avenue had opened up during his absence. Things always had a way of working out. Pulling a hard left, he straightened out until he could fit into the proper lane, driving into town in a manner that was almost leisurely. There was no sign of the construction gate that had blocked it off earlier, nor the pylons or signs. He didn’t dwell on it.

There was a boat launch back down in Rose Water. He had spied it from the dock, tiny shapes that had to have been small vessels moored to it. No doubt for those tourists who wanted to rent them out and take in the sights of the lake. He wouldn’t need anything fancier than that, not for the trip he was taking.

Blessedly, the streets were still perfectly empty, the drive to the park taking mere _minutes_. And still he didn’t question his good fortune, but pulled into the first parking space he found. There was still a walk down to the water, but he could manage. As he pulled it out of the trunk, the bundle was heavy and awkward, made all the more unwieldy by the strange new objects; it was his cross to bear, now, and bear it he would.

The cobblestones were slick with silt under his feet, dampened by the first fat raindrops threatening to become a downpour. It only served to make his journey to the boat launch all the more treacherous. He slipped once, nearly losing grip. His arms strained, his lungs froze a little more with each breath, his vision doubling then quadrupling as his eyes began to spill over with tears he hadn’t realized he was holding back. Each bench he passed reminded him of that day they had spent out on the lake, each gazebo and tree casting shadows of picnic lunches and whispered secrets in the sunlight.

There was a single canoe tethered to the dock, the oars crossed and waiting for him. Gingerly as one might a swaddled babe, James laid down the awful parcel into the boat, easing himself in afterward. His arms ached fiercely but he rowed and rowed as though his very existence depended upon it. In a way, he suspected it might. Something scraped along the side of the boat but he dared not look down; in his mind he could see skeletal fingers reaching up toward the surface, their still-growing nails hooking into the polished wood, aching to drag him down, down, _down_.

Fog rolled thick over the lake, crashing against him in waves darker than the waters below. Still he rowed, propelling himself forward in the inky blackness, knowing not where he was going, only that he _needed_ to be there.

“I promised I’d take you again…” his voice sounded strange in the night, swallowed up by the churning currents and screaming wind. “I _promised_. I’m sorry it took me this long…I’m so, _so_ sorry…” There was no response. He wasn’t sure why he had expected one.

The canoe struck something solid after what felt like an eternity, and James looked up to see the dock looming above him. How he had made his way to the island he hadn’t a clue, but it seemed the very tide itself had served to guide him on his way. As he rose he dropped the oars and they floated off unimportantly—he wouldn’t have any need for them now.

He moored the boat quickly, gathering up the bundle in his arms and stumbling ashore. The weight was considerable and he was hardly accustomed to lifting such bulk, but that did little to hinder his progress. There was no path, per se, but it didn’t matter—the island was barren except for the church.

It had begun to rain, a torrential downpour soaking him to the bone, saturating James and the weight he bore until he felt he might sink into the very earth itself, lungs filling until he drowned. Each step felt like an eternity passing before him, the weight pushing him down into the hungry, sucking mud until it filled his shoes and stiffened the cuffs of his pants. He climbed ever higher as the hill sloped up and up and up, reaching toward the clouds or Heaven or whichever came first.

When finally he reached the church he found the doors open wide in welcome. His legs ached and his arms thrummed but he crossed the threshold into its icy nave.

Lightning flashed from outside, sending bright shocks of light through the stained glass windows, casting brilliant shadows of deepest red along the wooden floors. His soles slipped and slid, caked with silted mud, leaving a trail of damp earth in his wake. Every pew he past was empty save for the inches of dust left to worship in the darkness, but still he felt eyes on the back of his neck, hooded and hungry and expectant.

The apse was illuminated by dim, wavering candlelight, but he was too far-gone to wonder who or what was keeping them lit. Their tiny flames filled the dusty air with a dry heat as he neared the altar, sending angry prickles down his flesh. As he walked into the light, impermanent and quivering, he was able to make out the shape of the slab in front of the altar. It was almost as though it had been sitting there since time immemorial, waiting for him—for _them_.

Carefully, reverently, James set the bundle down onto the marble block, removing each of the other items with the utmost care. He didn’t know _how_ he knew what to do, much less how to do it, but his hands moved as though well practiced in the art. “Forgive me for waking you,” he murmured to the air, his voice hanging around his head like a looming noose instead of echoing through the church. “But without you, I just…can’t go on. I can’t live without you, Mary.”

The obsidian of the chalice gleamed somehow red in the candlelight, more likely a trick of the eye than anything else, perhaps reflecting off of the bright and bloody pages of the Crimson Ceremony, but there was still a faint tremble to his fingers as he opened the chrism’s vial.

“This town…the old Gods haven’t left this place. Not really. You always knew that, didn’t you? All of those books you read, the stories you heard…they still grant power to those who venerate them. Power…to defy even death.”

A scream rent the air, sending a finger of chill down his spine. He whirled around in time for another flash of lightning to throw the church into harsh relief, momentarily illuminating the rows of pews and the lifeless, ravenous things that sat upon them. Darkness swallowed them up with a thunderclap, but he had seen their faces and recognized them as his own, eyes haunted pits above deadmen’s grins. He had seen the thing in the back, too. The creature bathed in red and standing as a statue might, one hand wrapped around its executioner’s knife.

“ _James._ ” The voice came from behind him and he could all but _feel_ the lips pressed to his ear, the rancid breath on his throat; when he spun back around, the altar was empty, the sheet bare in the candlelight, some strange mockery of a night of passion.

“Mary?” he called out, his voice echoing like a hollow prayer through the church’s hallowed ribs. _Mary?...Mary?...Mary?..._ But he couldn’t find her, couldn’t _see_ her, even though she had just spoken to him. “Mary? Where are you? Are you all right?” The tears were hot on his face, burning his skin like sin as he spun, vision and hearing going dim and blurry as though he were slowly sinking into the depths of Toluca itself, pulled under by bony fingers and his own screams.

“ _You_ deserve to die too, James.” Her words were firm and unforgiving as they rang out through the church, deafening amid crashes of thunder and wind. He could feel her behind him, could smell her perfume over the pungent stench of decay, of dirt, of rotting bedclothes. 

“Mary,” he breathed, mouth and nose filling with dark water as he tasted her name on his tongue.

The hands that wrapped around his throat were cold as death.


	5. Observation Deck

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> ((After a very long and extremely unintentional hiatus, here we are again...Thanks for those of you who've stuck around, and welcome to those of you who are just finding this! I'm hoping that life will calm down here and there won't be another huge gap of time between chapters like there was this time around.))

He passed his hand over his face to make sure that what he was seeing in the mirror was him—really and truly _him_. The lighting of the bathroom made him look gaunt and tired, giving his skin a strange and sickly green cast. He fought the urge to vomit, knowing full well there wouldn’t be enough in his stomach to manage much more than painful dry heaves; the sensation passed, and he found himself walking back out to the observation deck on shaky legs.

From over the guardrails, Toluca Lake appeared glassy and serene. James leaned himself against a post, heedless of the rust rubbing off on the sleeves of his jacket, and found his palm pressed to the mat of folded paper kept safe in his pocket. He didn’t have the wherewithal to take it out, to inspect it, to let his eyes glide over the loops and curves of the handwriting he knew so well.

The name on the envelope said _Mary_ , and the creases of the letter still held the faintest trace of her perfume. The arrival of the letter had been confusing, though he found he had never been able to feel _upset_ about it. Much as he tried, much as he _wanted_ to, he had found he was unable to fathom it being a joke or a cruel barb. It was from Mary, it _had_ to be…but that, of course, was impossible. Dead people, he had to remind himself, couldn’t write letters. And Mary had died of that damn disease three years ago.

Then…why was it that he was _looking for her?_ If she was dead, if she was _gone_ , then why had he trekked all the way out to Silent Hill, of all places, to try and find her? Because she had mentioned it in the letter? Because she had reminded him again and again of how badly she wanted to go back, of how much she loved watching the water and the sunsets and breathing the fresh lake air.

The answer was difficult for him to admit.

It was difficult because he only _knew_ Mary was dead, _knew_ she had died of her illness…but when he pushed himself to come up with any memory of her wake, her funeral, her cemetery plot, he couldn’t provide one. Not _one_. He could recall no flowers, no mourners, no sad words spoken on a rainy day. There were no black clothes in his memory, nor epitaphs, nor tearful goodbyes. There was _nothing_. And perhaps that was just a last-ditch effort of a traumatized mind grappling with its new reality but maybe, just _maybe_ …maybe it was something else. James had been saddled with the strangest sensation that he had forgotten something very, very important; it had clung to him, weighing his body down for the entirety of his long drive from home.

But for the _life_ of him…he couldn’t figure out what it was.

So he’d come to Silent Hill, then, in the hopes of remembering. In the hopes of finding a miracle—finding _Mary_. Her letter, after all, had said as much: _Silent Hill…You promised you’d take me there again someday…I’m alone there now. In our special place. Waiting for you._

He’d spent much of the time in the car trying to place precisely where she meant, as the whole _town_ had been their special place, really. The place they’d spent their honeymoon, all those years and years back, what felt like a lifetime ago. But he’d decided she’d _had_ to have meant the park on the lake. Rose Water. They’d spent an entire day there, just staring out at the water, reveling in each other’s company. She _must’ve_ meant Rose Water Park. She _must’ve_.

When his legs stopped shaking, he eased himself up from his lean and walked back to his car, the engine still clicking and cooling from the long drive. When he opened the driver’s side door, he was immediately assaulted by a horrible smell, heady enough to double him over for a moment. What was _that?_ He certainly hadn’t smelled it during the drive over—had he simply not been paying attention? Had he become so accustomed to it that he hadn’t noticed? The heat of the engine likely only made it worse, but standing there in the clear lake air, it struck him immediately as something akin to _rot_. James grabbed the map from the seat of the car and shut the door again, knowing full well that he’d have to contend with the stench again when he returned.

Likely, something in the trunk had gone bad. It would be an easy enough fix once he wasn’t so preoccupied with finding Mary.

James was surprised to find how easily, how quickly, his feet carried him to the town. Down the forest path, gravel scratching under his shoes; through the cemetery, the sound of sobs not too far from him in the fog; into the city proper, windows dark and cars abandoned. He felt, strangely, as though it had been only yesterday that he had been there last. Though his muscle memory had never left him.

He turned the corner into Rose Water, and was at once humbled by the way the trees absorbed the sounds of his footsteps. Even his breathing seemed muted by the thick walls of leaves surrounding him; it was as though sound itself ceased to be, in the park. His pulse quickened at the thought of it being _too_ quiet, _too_ calm. It was then, and only then, that the silence of the town began to creep to the forefront of his mind. There hadn’t been any people out on the streets. There hadn’t been any people _anywhere_.

But much as he found he couldn’t dredge up the energy enough to be concerned over Mary’s letter, so too did he find that he couldn’t feel any particular dread. Perhaps it was some holiday, or he had lost track of the time and everyone had already gone off to bed. He couldn’t spend too much time dwelling on it, not when he had to find Mary.

As he stepped into the open area of the park, he cast a quick glance towards the sky. Everything seemed so calm, so still, aside from the fog slowly rolling in from the lake. What a difference it was from the _last_ time he’d been there…there had been a monumental storm churning the waters, sending the wind screaming up and down each arm of the park’s paths, blowing leaves and picnic blankets and everything else unlucky enough to be in its path. The sky had been so dark, illuminated only by the occasional fork of lightning…

“No,” James said, breaking the silence pressing down around him. “No, that’s…that’s not right.” His back prickled with fingers of heat and chill at once, a strange signal of unease and burgeoning fear. The last time he’d been here, he’d been with Mary, and the day had been beautiful. They’d even gotten burnt from the sun shining down on them through the soft-spun clouds; he’d _never_ seen a storm over Lake Toluca, he hadn’t even seen an early morning _drizzle_.

Then where on Earth had that memory come from?

As he tried to grasp it, to place it more solidly, he felt it slip from him like the last vestiges of a dream. Before long, he wasn’t sure at all that he hadn’t only _imagined_ the recollection. He was tired, after all, and hadn’t slept in days. It had been such a long drive, looking out at nothing but the lines zipping past him on the highway. It only made sense that his mind would play tricks on him. And yet…

The lake came full into view as he walked out of the tree line, cobblestones becoming wooden planks under his feet. Here there was no silence, only the gentle lapping of water against the dock’s legs beneath him. There was no sunshine, either, but the lake was placid and calm underneath the blanket of fog. As he walked closer to the edge, shapes began to come clearer into focus on the platform. A coin-operated viewing machine for the tourists, an unmanned food stand of some sort, and…

“ _Mary?!_ ” He knew that silhouette, knew that posture and shape. His heart was in his throat as he jogged up to her, feeling that he might burst from the inside. He had _found her_. She was still _alive_ , she had been waiting for him all this time here in the town. She _hadn’t_ died, she _wasn’t_ dead, she was here— _right here_ —where he could see her and touch her and…The woman turned around, facing him fully, and James felt his stomach drop as though the platform had given way under him, sending plunging into the cold water below. “No…you’re… _not_ …”

The woman laughed, and his heart clenched again—her eyes crinkled just like Mary’s did. “Do I look like your girlfriend?” she asked in Mary’s voice, smiling Mary’s smile. But she wasn’t Mary.

Not even _close_.

As she straightened up, James realized how _wrong_ her posture really was, how fluidly she moved, how deliberately she held her head. There were similarities, sure—hell, the resemblance was _uncanny_ —but still he found that he had no idea how he could’ve mistaken this person for _Mary_.

“No, my…” his voice stuck in his throat, threatening to crack, and he cleared it sheepishly. “My late wife.” He mumbled this part, struck by the ridiculousness of the situation. He had mistaken her for his _late_ wife. “I can’t believe it…you could be her _twin_.” He said quickly, breezing past the awkwardness of his previous statement. And strangely, she seemed intensely pleased by the comment, widening her smile as she pushed herself away from the railing. He watched as she shifted her stance, shaking his head slowly as he realized the extent of their similarities. And their differences. “Your face…your _voice_ …just your hair and clothes are different.” But it was more than that, really. Mary would’ve never worn lipstick as dark as that. She never would’ve worn her hair like that, bleached and dip-dyed at the ends. She would’ve never worn a skirt as tight as that, a shirt as small as that, boots as tall as those. Mary wouldn’t have smirked like that either, strutting along the docks, watching him like a spider that had just spotted a juicy fly.

With another laugh, low and smoky, she lifted her eyebrows. “My name…is _Maria_ ,” she said matter-of-factly, setting her hands on her hips. “I don’t look like a, uh, _ghost_ , do I?” She gave herself a once-over before looking back up at James from through thick eyelashes. “See? Feel how warm I am?” Before he had time to react, she’d reached out, setting her palm against his cheek. And she was right—Maria was just as solid, just as warm as he was, save for the thin slivers of chill where her rings lay against his skin.

She wore Mary’s perfume. 

Suddenly painfully aware of himself, James took an awkward half-step back, moving just enough to break their connection. “You’re really _not_ Mary…” he laughed quietly, rubbing at the back of his neck anxiously. He could still feel the line of her hand on his cheek, the silky smoothness of her skin. 

“I _told you_. I’m _Maria_.” He was relieved to see she hadn’t taken any offense at his retreat—to the contrary, her pale eyes were alight with amusement. The way she smiled was making it difficult for him to breathe properly. 

“Sorry, I guess…I was confused,” James admitted, looking out toward the lake. “I’m, um…I’m James. Sorry, I’m just looking for her—Mary. Have you seen her?” As strange as the interaction was, it felt good to be talking to another human being, to hear another voice. He was sure he seemed insane, but she— _Maria_ —didn’t much seem to mind.

The heels of her boots made dull, resounding clicks as she walked back to the railing, folding her arms atop and leaning over. “Didn’t you say she died?” She looked up at him from where she rested, taking a moment to flip a stray tendril of hair from out of her eyes. There wasn’t any of the shock he had expected, nor was there any distaste or concern; her question had sounded genuinely curious, perhaps even a little entertained. Certainly not how Mary would’ve reacted to a stranger rambling about their dead spouse.

“Yeah, three years ago. But I got a letter from her.” Maria’s eyebrows shot up at that, and James cringed. It all sounded a lot more convincing in his head—and a lot less _crazy_. “She…she said she was waiting in our special place.”

“And that’s…here?” There was a quiet splash as she nudged a pebble into the water, watching the circular ripples of the lake’s surface. There was the faintest hint of distaste in her voice, he thought. Though whether it was directed at him or the lake, he hadn’t the slightest clue. “Anyway. I haven’t seen her.” Well, he supposed that was to be expected. “Is this your _only_ special place?” The question caught him by surprise; was she…was she actually trying to help him find Mary?

He thought on it for a moment, remembering her letter, remembering their visit. “Well…there’s the hotel too, I guess. The one on the lake? I wonder if it’s still there…” And he had no idea _why_ he was telling her all of this. The words gushed forth from him before he could do anything to stop them, spilling out in a sort of catharsis. She just looked _so much_ like Mary…it felt somehow wrong to _not_ tell her.

Entirely oblivious to his internal conflict, Maria had turned around, keeping her elbows and back to the guardrail. “The Lakeview Hotel? Yeah, it’s still there,” she nodded, glancing over her shoulder in what was ostensibly the direction of the Lakeview. When she turned back to him, her lips had curved into something illicit. “So the _hotel_ was your special place, huh? I’ll _bet_ it was…” Maria dropped him a knowing little wink, flashing her too-white teeth in a scandalous laugh.

Immediately he felt the tips of his ears heat up, the flush creeping into his cheeks and down his neck. He turned his head resolutely, making a point of combing his fingers through his hair to obscure his face and blossoming embarrassment. Her insinuation had brought with it a strange rush of shame, as though he had been caught with his hand in the proverbial cookie jar.

“Oh, don’t get so mad…I was just joking,” Maria snickered, straightening herself back out. “Anyway, it’s not that way, it’s _this way,”_ she gestured over her shoulder with her head, pointing a thumb in the proper direction. Without any further ado, she straightened up from her lean again, beckoning him forward as she began to walk.

“You’re…coming with me?”

She paused, looking at him as though he’d sprouted a second set of legs. “You were gonna just _leave_ me,” the statement hung in the air, swirling around his throat like a set of hands. “With all of these _monsters_ around.”

 _Monsters?_ The idea sent a flash of discomfort through him. James found himself wondering if Maria was the sort of person he would be _safe_ with. Who _was_ this woman? They had only just met and now she was insisting on coming along with him? And if she was seeing _monsters_ …but then again, _he_ was looking for his dead wife. His dead wife who had sent him a letter, three years to the day after her death. Maybe he didn’t have the right to be picky about others’ mental states. “N-no, but…”

“I’m all alone here!” The dark, flirty façade flickered then, suggesting something like fear lying beneath. She folded her arms across her chest, rubbing at her elbows nervously, “Everyone else is _gone_.” Her voice echoed dismally, bouncing across the glassy water like a skipped stone.

 _Gone…gone…gone…_ James shivered. The image of the empty streets came back to him again. But they _weren’t_ all gone, he thought to himself. There was the person in the cemetery, the girl. Only…he hadn’t spoken to anyone in the cemetery…had he?

In a flash, Maria’s smile was back, just as secretive and alluring as it had been before. “Besides…I look like Mary, don’t I?” She was terribly close to him again, close enough that he could make out the careful detailing of the butterfly tattoo peeking out from the waistline of her skirt. “And you _loved_ her, right?”

He _had_. He had loved her _so_ much…he still _did_. But he was beginning to fear that the idea of walking around with someone who shared her face was too much. He had come to Silent Hill looking for _Mary_ —not some _imposter_ —and having Maria with him felt somehow blasphemous.

Her expression deepened with his silence, “Or maybe…just maybe…you _hated_ her.”

The words rocked his very foundation as though she’d reached out and slapped him. “Don’t be ridiculous!” he said breathlessly, brow furrowed with blind disbelief anyone could make such an _inhuman_ assumption of him.

“So it’s okay if I go along with you?” There was a certain triumph to her tone, her eyes sparkling mischievously.

“Yeah, it’s…it’s fine.”

Her smile was radiant as she set off again, walking astride him. There was a confidence to her, an unhurried coolness to each step. “You know…” she said after a time, arms folded across her chest as they walked through the park. “I couldn’t help but notice. You said you’re looking for your _wife_.”

“I _am_.”

“Uh huh…” her tone was coy, girlish. She cocked her head to the side just slightly, and even through the fog, he could see the way her eyes flicked down to his side. “You’re uh, not wearing a wedding ring, though.” It hung in the air like a question, potent and obvious.

James opened his mouth to respond, but when he looked down, realized she was _right_. He _wasn’t_ wearing his ring. His brow furrowed at the realization, and his other hand moved to rub at the space it should’ve taken up. There wasn’t any sort of mark, or line, or particular smoothness to that band on his finger. There was nothing to suggest he had only recently removed the ring. When _had_ he taken it off? Where had he _put_ it? “Oh. I…guess I must’ve left it at home,” he said more to himself than to Maria, still looking down at his left hand, wracking his brain.

Maria had simply made a small little noise of contented disbelief and the topic had dropped, but James found his fingers worrying that patch of skin long after they exited the park. 

“Do you know why it’s so…quiet?” Once they were back in the town, the oppressive stillness of it all came crashing back on him. It was slightly better now that there was another living being with him, another pair of footsteps echoing on the cement, but it was still immediately apparent that something was _wrong_ about the place. And it wasn’t just the fog, he suspected.

Shaking her head slowly, Maria looked around from one side of the street to the other. “No,” she said, voice low, almost reverent. “It was just…like this when I woke up,” she admitted. “I haven’t seen another person at _all_ , so when you showed up…” her smile resurfaced as she turned to him, “Well, let’s just say I’m very glad you found me, James.”

He found himself returning her smile, if not with a touch more reservation. Logically, he knew the fluttering of his heart was due to their resemblance, that she looked just enough like Mary that the lesser parts of his brain had confused them. The strangeness of the situation must’ve been playing at him, too—he hadn’t been in his right mind ever since the letter arrived. But she was only being friendly, there was no reason for him to _not_ behave warmly towards her. Still, something tugged at him; it was a low ache, a nagging discomfort, the way a tongue continuously worries at a chipped tooth. 

She continued walking just a step or two ahead of him, her pace still surprisingly swift for the heels she wore. Each movement of her hips was punctuated by the smallest tinkling sound as the golden links of her belt clinked together. There was a femininity to her that he found he had missed very, very much.

“You really seem to know your way around here,” he commented, directing his eyes to the concrete he walked on, trying not to stare for any prolonged time, lest she feel his eyes on her.

“I should hope so,” Maria laughed in reply, gesturing airily with a dainty hand.

“You’re local, then?”

She paused, looking sharply down an alley as though having spotted movement. James watched her expression harden, then snap back to its coquettish smile. “I was born here,” she answered, resuming her pace. James couldn’t help but look down into the alley as well, seeing nothing but a shiny oil slick of a puddle and a few discarded crates.

Her words echoed back to him warningly: _You were just gonna leave me here, with all these monsters around?_ He let her gain a few paces on him, putting a wider space between the two of them. Just in case, he told himself. Just in case.

The silence of the town seemed to be eating at her more than anything else, and it wasn’t long before she spoke again. Strange company or not, James was glad for it. “So you said your wife died?” 

He felt his stomach sink and his throat tighten again. He wondered how much longer it would be before he stopped reacting that way. Hadn’t three years been time enough to heal? Had the appearance of the letter simply torn open wounds that had been well on their way to healing? James was suddenly seized with a sadness so intense, that it felt as though it had only been that morning that Mary had died. “She did,” he answered after a long while, voice quiet to hide whatever waiver might’ve been there. “Three years ago.”

“How?” The question was abrupt, impertinent. But Maria seemed not to care; she had asked it like one would ask how the weather was, or if there was milk left in the refrigerator. She paid no mind to James’s sudden change in posture, much less to the shocked expression on his face. She just kept walking and waited for a response. When she didn’t get one, she glanced over her shoulder at him, eyebrows raised, “Oh come on. You said it was three years ago, right? And you’re pretty young…what are you, 25?”

Averting his gaze, he shrugged. “A little older than that.”

“Uh huh. Well, what that tells _me_ is that _she_ probably died pretty young too, right?”

“I suppose.”

“I mean, you said I look just like her, don’t I? And _I’m_ pretty young,” she had the audacity to even _laugh_ at that, as though she wasn’t dredging up some of the worst memories, the worst emotions, of his life. “And pretty young things like me don’t just _die_.” She turned back to him, her smile having softened slightly. “So it probably wasn’t an _expected_ thing, huh?”

He regarded her for a moment, and was surprised to find her expression melt even further, into something like shame.

“Sorry. That was…probably rude. I just thought—”

“She was sick.” James nodded absently, sliding his hands into the pockets of his jacket as they walked. “The doctors…they never really figured out what it was.”

Her mouth twisted into something he couldn’t quite place. “That’s awful. I didn’t realize…” 

“We went… _everywhere_. We talked to everyone. Got second, third, fourth opinions…” He heaved a sigh, feeling as though his chest were being crushed by some unseen weight, his lungs filling with icy water from the lake. “In the end, they decided it was just something genetic. Both her parents had died fairly young, but in those days…”

“No one ever really looked into it.”

“Yeah. Eventually there wasn’t anything the doctors could do for her. There wasn’t anything _anyone_ could do for her,” he added, the emphasis ringing like a thunderclap between them. “All we could do—all _I_ could do—was make sure she wasn’t feeling any pain.” A corner of his mouth tucked in, and he bit at the soft flesh of his inner cheek. “So I guess it wasn’t… _entirely_ unexpected.”

Another beat of silence fell between them. James opened his mouth, felt himself on the verge of apologizing for the torrent of information, personal and unpleasant, but Maria beat him to it. “I’m sorry,” she said, sounding much less composed, much more earnest than he had come to expect of her. “I didn’t mean…I don’t know _what_ I meant. I’m sorry, James, that must’ve been horrible.”

He took in a breath, held it, exhaled slowly. “It was.” The acknowledgement washed over him, surprisingly refreshing. “It was,” he repeated.

“Well…we’re getting close to the boat launch.” Maria slowed her stride, matched pace with him, and suddenly James found that he didn’t much care. She may have made a few insensitive remarks, she may have been behaving a bit strangely at first, but really…were they so different?

“Boat launch?”  
  
“To get to the hotel,” she explained. When she saw no understanding in his eyes, her smile returned. “It _has_ been a while since you’ve been here, huh?” she asked, tone gently teasing. “The Lakeview is on the _other_ side of Lake Toluca. You have to take a boat to get there. But don’t worry, they always have a few spares moored out there, and it’s really not that long of a row.”

And through the haze of his memory, he thought she was right—he had the faintest recollection of getting into one of those boats, a small wooden canoe, rowing himself out across the water until his arms ached and sweat ran down his face like rain. “Oh, right. I guess you must go out there often, then?”

Maria laughed again. “To the Lakeview? No,” she shook her head. “I’ve actually never been,” her voice was thoughtful as she said it, eyes narrowing slightly in thought.

“ _Never?_ ” James asked. “But I thought you—”

Before he was able to finish the thought, Maria had begun to cough; quietly at first, tiny little puffs of air obscured by her hand, but then harder and louder. She held a hand up to him, the gesture a pathetic combination of “hang on,” and “I’ll be all right,” but before long she had doubled over, hands on her knees. It was a dry cough, but _deep_ , and worse yet…familiar. 

He felt the color begin to drain from his face as another memory of Mary, unbidden, came to him. It had been during their honeymoon, right before she’d gotten sick. They’d been resting in their hotel room, the Lakeview’s windows providing them a gorgeous view of the lake—per the name—and she’d been smiling so sweetly, so gently. She’d been so naïve of what was about to befall her. “Promise we’ll come again, James,” she’d laughed, perfectly content until there came a crease between her eyebrows, her expression darkening for only the slightest moment before she covered her face and the first of the coughs had begun.

“ _Ugh_ ,” Maria muttered, straightening herself back up with an unceremonious tug of her shirt’s neckline. “Sorry about that, I…are you okay?” she furrowed her brow as she got a good look of him, “You look like you just saw a ghost or something.”

James felt as though his throat had been lined with sandpaper. He hadn’t expected to be caught so off his guard, and as she spoke, he felt the pallor of his face begin to grow warm with embarrassment. “Are you…are you sick?” he managed after a moment, trying to keep the wariness from his tone.

She smiled, flashing those too-white teeth again, and then laughed softly. “I mean…I guess that depends. Do hangovers count as being sick?” With a wink, she smoothed out her shirt, “I’m fine. I just…it’s something I woke up with. It’s nothing. Come on, we’ve still got a way to go.”

It was all ringing familiar to him. _Too_ familiar. Was it because of Mary? Or was it some uncomfortable, passing moment of déjà vu? He didn’t have time enough to decide, as Maria had already begun walking ahead of him again, stride just as confident as before.

“So,” she began again, and James didn’t _need_ déjà vu to know she was loading up another unpleasant question for him to answer. “You said that the lake and the hotel were special to you and your wife.”

He nodded slightly, watching the horizon slowly taking shape through the fog. In the dim light, they seemed almost like the silhouettes of ancient giants, the glimmer of glass windows following them like pupils. “They’re where we spent most of our time when we visited. Mary— _we_ —really loved them.”

“Lots of romantic memories,” Maria suggested, offering him another quick, flirtatious smirk over her shoulder.

James chuckled nervously in response.

Still smiling, she stretched her arms out to either side of her. “Any other _special places?_ I find it hard to believe you two _only_ checked out the lake and the hotel the whole time you were here.”

“Oh, um…well…” At that, he found he actually had to _think_. Where else _had_ they gone? What _had_ they seen and done? It felt like a lifetime had passed since their stay. The decrepit appearance of the town only added to that sensation. “We…we definitely ate at a lot of the restaurants in town,” he said, though the memories were still fuzzy and all but shapeless. And we…oh—we _did_ spend some time at the historical society.” It returned to him in a rush of colors and sounds; the old, dusty shelves, the water-stained paintings on the walls. “Mary was really interested in the history of this place…spent an entire afternoon just flipping through old books.” He smiled, but it felt stiff, sad. 

Maria watched him from the corner of her eye, but he could feel her appraising him. “Not really _your_ thing though, huh?”

“Not really, no,” he admitted sheepishly. “I’ve…never been one for history.”

“Too bad,” she replied airily, looking from one side of the street to another. “This place has got _tons_ of it. This whole area,” Maria began, sweeping her arm out to the side, pantomiming a tour guide, “Used to be a sacred place. It’s easy to see why…All the trees, the lake, the _quiet_. Some people even say…” she continued, dropping her voice into the conspiratorial tone of a seasoned teller of ghost stories, “That the Old Gods are still here—never left.”

James was overtaken again by that strange, wavering sense of familiarity. She must’ve been reciting something from a tourism pamphlet, or a plaque he had seen during his last trip. Something about those words struck a chord deep in his mind—discordant and warning. But before he could dwell too heavily on it, a shape began to form to his left, and as the defunct sign became clearer in the fog, he was struck with yet another memory, this one much less unpleasant. “I was much more interested in the bowling alley, to be honest.” He couldn’t help but let out a small, shamefaced laugh at the admission. Looking at the building now, it seemed so…cheap. So childish.

Wrinkling her nose up, Maria grimaced. “Ech. I hate bowling.” James nodded with understanding—Mary had, too. “Now, the _bar_ in the bowling alley…” she waggled a finger towards him. “ _That’s_ more my style.” She stopped walking to stand next to him, regarding the molding walls of the bowling alley’s exterior. “How about you, James?” she asked, tone coy enough to be a mockery of itself. “You strike me as the kind of man who enjoys a good drink.”

And he was. Well… _had been_. The thought sent a pang of thirst through him, the likes of which he hadn’t felt in a long while. “Uh…” It wasn’t the sort of topic he wanted to get into. “Not so much.”

“Well that’s a shame.” Her voice had come out strangely, choked, and without further warning, she fell into another fit of wracking coughs, pressing a palm tight to her mouth. James moved to help, to give her something to lean against at the very least, but she simply held her other hand up at him once more. It was shaking this time, he noticed. It was the _depth_ of the coughing that concerned him, the reedy quality each of her sharp inhalations had taken on.

“Okay, we need to get you some help,” he said, surprising even himself with the firmness in his voice. “Come on,” he said, taking her arm.

“It’s just…just a hangover,” she coughed, but there was no hiding the heavy wheezing of her breath. When she stood back upright, James could see immediately how pale she’d gotten, how bright the pits of her cheeks had become. “I just…aw _shit_.” There was a small, humiliated smile then, and he watched her shake her head in defeat. “Okay…okay, you’re right. I actually…I have some medicine I can take.” 

“Then why have you waited this long?” He was flabbergasted—if she _knew_ she was ill, why wouldn’t she take her medication? Mary had written out extensive timetables for her own, mapping out when to take what, what not to mix with what, what needed to be taken on an empty stomach or with food…of course, by the time they had given her any sort of pill, it was mostly just to placate her, take away some of the discomfort. There wasn’t anything on the market that could’ve fixed what she had, so the idea of Maria _willingly_ not taking something that _might’ve_ helped…

She patted his shoulder reassuringly. “I accidentally left it at my place. I realized it like…five minutes before you found me, that’s all. I figured I’d be fine without it, but…”

“Well, let’s get it, then.”

Her eyes were on him, watching his face carefully. “Are you sure? We’ll have to backtrack a little, and I know you wanted to get to the hotel to look for your wife—”

“I do, but—”

She shook her head, the pendant of her choker jingling quietly. “It’s fine. I can go back myself. If you just keep following this street, Nathan Avenue, you should get to the boat launch in a few minutes.” 

There was a moment, long and uncomfortable, where he tried to make sense of the tempest raging in his head. He _did_ want to get to the hotel. He _did_ want to try and look for Mary. The longer he took, the more likely it was that she would leave, or relocate, or even worse, think that he _wasn’t_ trying to find her. But at the same time…there was something tugging at him, worrying the baser parts of his mind. He found that, for whatever reason, he didn’t want to leave Maria alone—not here, not in these strange, silent streets. Not when she was unwell, not when she had argued so strongly for coming with him in the first place. It was she, after all, who was trying to help him. The least he could do was help _her_.

“It’ll be fine.” James took her arm again, letting her rest some of her weight against him. “I’m sure it won’t take too long, and I don’t…” he glanced down the way they’d come, but the fog was thick enough to obscure nearly everything from view. “I don’t want you walking around alone out here.”

Her relief was palpable. “Oh thank God. I was so scared out here, alone, until you showed up.” Maria offered him another smile, though this time, he noticed, it was significantly more tired. “It’s just over this way.” Slower now, as though she was finally feeling the strain of her heels, Maria led him back and behind the Bowl-O-Rama, where the street narrowed into a claustrophobic alleyway.

“You live…back here?” he asked, more confused than anything else. There was little to see besides brick walls and discarded soda cans, but still he watched as she tried the handle of an old, rusted door on the left side of the alley. “This doesn’t really…look like an entrance to an apartment building. Or a house.”

“That’s ‘cuz it’s not.” She muted another cough behind a fist, before reaching down into her boot and pulling out a key. Methodically, she slid it into the lock, turned it, and replaced the key in her shoe. “This is where I _work_ , really,” she explained, reaching into the pocket of her skirt and removing yet another key. It, too, she turned in the lock before replacing. “I’ve just sort of stay here sometimes…I guess.” With that, she turned from him, reaching into her shirt to locate a third key. When she caught him looking, she smirked, flourishing it. “Some high-tech security measures,” she joked, turning the final key before pushing the door open. “After you.”

James chose not to comment on peculiar way she’d gone about opening the door, instead stepping past her. It was immediately obvious that this had been a mistake, as everything beyond the threshold was bathed in darkness—he couldn’t see so much as an inch in front of him once Maria shut the door behind them. He stumbled, caught himself on a wall, and felt a small puff of air at the back of his neck as she laughed.

He jolted, just slightly, as he felt a cool hand move to the small of his back, guiding him. “There are stairs,” Maria said, voice low in his ear. “Here, feel for the railing.” With her other hand, she took his wrist, bringing his right hand to the rail running up the wall.  
  
“Uh…thanks.” He was glad for the cover of the darkness, as she couldn’t see his face redden at the contact. It had been a while. A long, long while.

“Mhm,” he could hear the smile through her hum, walking up ahead of him. It was clearly second nature for her, maneuvering easily through the darkened stairwell.

Hand on the railing, James realized there was a gentle, persistent vibration coming from the wall. A second of contemplation, and he noticed it in his feet as well. Machinery, maybe? When he reached the landing of the stairs, it became apparent that it was _music_ , coming from the next room over.

The hallway they found themselves in was short, and only lit only slightly better. He was still seeing in shades of grainy greens when Maria took hold of him again, turning him to face a large door. “You can wait in here,” she said. “I’ll just be a second, I think I left my medicine in my room. There’s more space in here.”

“All right…”

“I mean…unless you _want_ to come with me?” He felt her more than he _saw_ her, really; felt her proximity, felt her hands on his shoulders, felt the soft ebb and flow of her breath. More than anything, he felt her _eyes_.

His face grew warmer. “I don’t want to get in your way…I’ll uh, I’ll wait in here.”

Her laughter was quiet, and lacked any of the teasing he had sensed earlier. “Have it your way.” She reached around him to the door’s handle and jiggled it before pushing it open, and then walked to the other side of the hall, ostensibly to her room, heels clicking quietly along the floor.

Releasing a breath shakier than he had anticipated, James walked through the door into the open area of the room. The lighting was even better than in the hall, though still dismal. There was a bright glow just to his right as he stepped in, and when he turned he was greeted by pink neon tubes. _Heaven’s Night_ , the sign read, buzzing along with the music being piped in from unseen speakers. When he turned back, he noticed another sign, this one reading _Paradise_ , underneath which was a crude neon representation of a naked woman reclining. Whatever this place was, James was beginning to get the impression that he did not belong there.

The flickering lights of the signs coalesced over a dilapidated bar setup, and he neared one of the stools, despite the small voice in the back of his head. The bottles along the back wall were old and caked with grimy dust, but he recognized with a seasoned expert’s eye that it didn’t much matter—places like this were meant to be viewed in low light, where you couldn’t make out the chips in the floor or the splotches of mold reaching out from the corners. Heaven’s Night was certainly a prime example of this: James thought that the linoleum floor had once been a dark, pine green, but it had been worn through by so much foot traffic and the scrape of chair legs that it became hard to tell.

Smattered around the bar where old wooden tables, stained with cigar residue and rings from glasses long-since removed. He picked the table furthest from the bar and brushed off a seat cushion with his sleeve before sitting. It felt safer, the distance. Near him was the edge of a stage, the lights of which were clogged with thick, ropy spider webs; he spent all of a minute wondering what sort of bands would play at a dive like this before he noticed the most prominent feature of the stage, and felt once again that his stomach may drop out of him entirely.

“Not the _coziest_ place, huh?”

James looked up, startled as though he’d been caught doing something he shouldn’t have. He was beginning to realize how frequent that sensation was becoming when in her presence.

Maria slunk past the bar, running a well-manicured finger along its surface before frowning at the gunk that came away. “Management has seen better days, I’ll tell you _that_ much…” As she passed the _Paradise_ sign, her face was thrown suddenly into sharp contrast, the lights giving her a pale pink cast. In the neon glow, it was hard to tell if she looked better or _worse_ than she had on the street. The light cast shadows in the pits of her cheeks, under her eyes, and in that moment she looked every inch Mary had when last he’d seen her, laid out in her hospital bed. But when she looked back to him, eyes taking quick inventory of each line of his face, her smirk widened and the illusion shattered. “I’m going to take a _wild_ guess here, and say that I don’t think you spent much time in Heaven’s Night when you were visiting Silent Hill last time.” Her laugh was quiet, punctuated by the clacking of her heels as she approached the stage. With one practiced step, she had lifted herself up onto the edge, using the prominent pole to better hoist herself.

James swallowed hard, again feeling as though his throat were full of sandpaper. It was strange how easily she had that effect on him. “You… _work_ here?” he asked, voice oddly strained.

Her laughter came easier that time. “Why James,” she drawled, “I _do_ think you’re embarrassed.” Still she wore that smile—teasing, but only just. “Haven’t known very many dancers in your time, hmm?” Maria asked. “Well…at least not _personally_ , right?” Again she tittered a laugh, taking a few steps across the stage before setting her hands on her hips. Underneath her boots, the swollen wood creaked and groaned. “Not that I do much of _that_. We don’t get very many visitors, these days.”

He stood up from the table, perhaps more abruptly than he had meant to, clearing his throat slightly. It was not a topic he wanted to remain on. “Did you find your medicine?”

Procuring a small orange bottle from her pocket, Maria dropped him another wink, rattling its contents around. “Right where I left them.”

“And you took some?”

She rolled her eyes with a laugh, setting her arms akimbo. “Why yes, doctor, I did.” As though to prove her point, Maria did a little twirl on the stage, spreading her arms out as a prima ballerina preparing to bow. “We should get going if you want to make it to the Lakeview before it starts to get dark.” She stepped back down off the stage and joined him. “They say Lake Toluca’s _bad_ in the dark.”

“You mean hard to navigate?”

Maria shrugged. “Maybe.”

James knit his brow at the cryptic response, but had spent enough time with her to know it was more than likely another joke aimed at him. “And you’re sure you’re feeling well enough to go?”

Another roll of her eyes. “Yes James,” she said, already halfway to the door to the hallway they’d entered from. And then, as an afterthought, she paused and circled back to the bar. “Actually…it’s been a long day. I might have a little nip for the road.” She examined the bottles lined up on the shelves with an appraising eye before spotting something that appealed to her. With nimble hands she plucked it up, shaking the bottle temptingly in his direction. “Any interest in joining me?”

Again the pang of thirst struck him, deep, deep down. His tongue had never felt quite so dry. But still, James shook his head, “No, I’m…I’m okay. You go ahead.”

“Suit yourself.” With a smile, Maria turned the bottle back to herself, puffing a short breath to blow away the layer of dust that coated it.

If the widening of her eyes was anything to go by, Maria realized how serious of a mistake she had made at the precise moment James did. The dust flew from the bottle, swirling around them in a thick cloud, immediately causing both of them to begin coughing to clear their lungs. For James, this lasted all of ten seconds; Maria was not half so lucky.

The bottle shattered to the floor as she dropped it, her hands clasped fervently to her mouth as she coughed and wheezed and gasped, her body doubled over to try and keep balanced. James rushed back to her, pulling her out of the bar and away from the dust cloud, but she continued coughing. Each breath she pulled in was shallow and sharp, the resulting coughs so deep that she caused herself to gag. 

Had James been able to see his reflection in that moment, he would’ve been shocked to see he’d gone as pale as Maria. He had seen this before, he’d been through this before. “We need to get you to a doctor. _Right now_.” He glanced around the room frantically, “Is there a phone here? In one of the back rooms maybe?” He sounded harried, almost manic.

Taking a few unsteady breaths, Maria shook her head. “It’s…down…” she managed to eke out, hands on her knees as she tried to pull slow breaths through her mouth. “But…but…” She managed another few breaths, “There’s a…hospital…next door.”

“Close?”

She nodded, slowly straightening herself back up as the fit began to subside. “Yeah. Just…just down the road. But James, you wanted to get to the hotel—”

“Maria, you need to see a doctor. _Now_ ,” he said firmly. When she only stared back at him in response, he added, “Mary… _the Lakeview_ can wait.”

After another long moment she nodded, nodding towards a door partially hidden by the stage. “We have to go out the back way to get there. Come on.”

The back way, it turned out, was much less an exit than it was a fire escape. They stepped out onto the tiny platform, and Maria took a second to breathe the cleaner air. James, on the other hand, was instantly distracted by what lay before them. “We have to go _down?_ ”

“Yeah, it’s just…” Realizing the gravity of the situation, Maria’s shoulders slouched. “ _Oh_.”

The two of them looked down the rickety set of stairs, the obstacle seeming insurmountable. They were tall and almost comically steep, and James thought that even if Maria had been in the _best_ of health, even if her legs _hadn’t_ been shaking with the aftermath of the episode, it still would’ve proven treacherous in the shoes she was wearing. In unison, they glanced back to one another, apprehension evident on both faces.

“Is this…the fastest way to the hospital?” James asked, reaching back to awkwardly rub at the nape of his neck. He looked back down the stairs, feeling the slightest waver of vertigo tugging at him.

Maria simply nodded, tentatively laying a hand against the rail. “I think I can…”

“Do you…” He took a deep breath in, “I can try and carry you. If you’re okay with that, I mean. The stairs are just…” He cast another glance down them.

“Steep,” she answered for him. 

“Yeah.” 

Lifting her eyes to him, Maria’s lips pursed slightly. “Would you mind?”

“Uh, no. No. Just…” There was a moment of discomfort as they both tried to angle themselves in the best way atop the small fire escape, but after some shifting, James was able to get an arm under her knees and the other at her back. He let out a humiliating groan of strain as he hoisted her up, the effort only slightly lessened with Maria hooking her arms around him for support.

“How romantic,” she said lowly, though he found he couldn’t tell if the barb in her tone was meant for him or herself.

A shop clerk by trade, James was not particularly suited for feats of physical strength. He had even stumbled, he was ashamed to admit, when first carrying Mary over the threshold after their wedding. There had only been _one_ other time he’d even _attempted_ lifting her, and by then she had wasted away to almost nothing. Even then, he could remember the way she’d weighed down his arms, more bone than flesh. That had been… 

“Please…don’t…don’t drop me, okay?”

The sound of Maria’s voice jerked him back to reality, and it was with a fair amount of concern that he adjusted his grip. “I won’t,” he said, but there was an uncertainty to his voice that made it very clear he was trying to reassure himself more than her.

Slowly, almost painfully so, James made his way down the steep staircase, wincing each time the metal beneath his feet rattled or squealed. Maria had clutched onto him with a surprising amount of strength, arms wrapped so tightly around his shoulders that she felt to him a human straightjacket. 

It felt like a lifetime before they reached the bottom of the staircase, and much to his embarrassment, James’s arms were shaking with exertion as he set her back on solid ground.

“The hospital is just ahead…” Her voice seemed smaller, almost distant, as she tried to make out the shape of the building in the fog. “Do you…do you mind if I…”

“Uh, no—no. Go ahead.” He offered her his arm, and she took it, resting much of her weight against him as they walked. James wasn’t sure when it had happened, but he could hear each of her inhalations now, heavy and rumbling with what sounded like fluid. That medication _really_ wasn’t doing her much good.

And _that_ brought a fresh wave of memories too, icy and aching. _Mary’s_ medicine hadn’t done anything to help _her_ , either. There had been times where he’d wondered if they were _hurting_ more than helping, filling her mind with fog thicker than that rolling through the streets, causing her to sleep away much of the day, warping her emotions and thoughts until she couldn’t bring herself to eat or read or listen to music…until all she could do was cry or scream. Or both.

Even moving as slowly as they were, it was only a few minutes before they reached the hospital, James helping Maria make her way carefully up the few stairs to the entrance.

They stepped through the doors and into a wall of sterile, temperature-controlled air, causing them both to shiver for an instant. The smells lit up the panic center of James’s mind, inundating him with images of latex gloves and stained gauze. He didn’t like hospitals so much, anymore.

The lights were on, casting a warm glow throughout the bright entrance, but strangely enough, there wasn’t so much as a single sound to be heard. It was as though they’d stepped foot into the library by mistake. Heaving a sigh, James pushed it from his mind, approaching the reception area. “Hello? _Hello?_ ” James banged against the glass of the receptionist’s window, peering in through the hazy panes with cupped hands when there was no response. “This isn’t right…” he said, lips tightening anxiously against his teeth. “Why isn’t anyone here?” His stomach was churning, roiling like waters in a storm. The smell of antiseptic was so strong he could almost taste it on the back of his tongue.   
  
“James…”

Why was it that they were never where they were supposed to be when you _needed_ them? There had always been nurses poking and prodding at Mary when he was trying to talk to her, when they were trying to be alone. Someone was always scribbling at a notepad or taking her vitals. But when you _needed_ them, when there was an _emergency_ , they were nowhere to be found. “It’s a _hospital_ , for Christ’s sake!” He paced over to the door of the nurse’s station, furiously jiggling the knob before pounding on it with his fists. “ _Hello?!”_

“James…”

“ _What?!_ ” He whirled around to her, given immediate pause when the look he received was quizzical and more than just a little uneasy. “Oh. Uh, sorry,” he muttered sheepishly, lowering his hands from the door. Just like that, the rage drained from him, leaving him feeling shamed. “I just…” But she turned to look down the corridor before he could finish, effectively cutting off the conversation. That was probably for the best, he thought—even _he_ wasn’t entirely sure what had come over him in that moment. Well…maybe that wasn’t _completely_ true. For a moment, brief and terrible, he had been back with Mary; back in those days, the ones in the very beginning of the end, where her coughing had brought clots of blood but no one seemed to care. Back in the days where enough had been enough and he found himself desperate to find _someone_ to acknowledge something was wrong.

But those days were far behind him. And Maria, though her exhalations had a familiar wet rumble to them, was not dying. Not as quickly as Mary had been, at least.

“I think I saw someone over there,” she said, pointing vaguely towards a connecting corridor. “Something moved…I think.”

James followed her line of sight to a small alcove, tightening the line of his lips before walking over. Of course there was no one there—the space was only just big enough to stand in, but nested on either side of it were two doors. One appeared to lead to the stairwell, the other to a patient wing. The latter had two fairly large panes of glass set into the double doors, and when he looked through them, he thought he could see a hint of movement on the other side as well.

“I don’t think we’re allowed in there,” Maria said, momentarily sounding herself again, teasing as she followed after him.

“Well we have to find _someone_ …you should really stay back there and sit.” Not for the first time, concern creased his forehead, “You shouldn’t be on your feet.”

She waved him off and stepped into the patient wing with him, but her face was still strangely pale, her complexion waxy. As though prompted by feeling his eyes on her, she pressed her fist to her mouth and stifled another bout of coughing. “Did you see someone?”

“I thought so…” James said, but he had already begun to feel apprehension sink low into his gut. The movement he had seen through the window had been nothing more than the shifting shadows caused by a flicking overhead light. He tried not to let the realization show on his face, and instead began walking down the cramped corridor, trying to peer into the rooms on either side. There weren’t many—they appeared to be large surgical suites from what dim shapes he could make out through the fogged glass. But it was unlike any hospital wing he’d been in.

Back when he had been visiting Mary, there had always been a constant bustle, a constant hum of noise. There were shoes squeaking on the floors, ventilators huffing, heart rate monitors beeping. The patients’ rooms were only ever darkened at night, and if absolutely _nothing_ else, there was always patient information clipped to the door for passing professionals to look at. Here there was…nothing. Nothing but locked doors and windows hazy with dust.

“How can there not be _anyone_ here?” Maria asked, breaking the silence that had fallen between them.

James started at the sound of her voice, and was more than a little surprised to realize that at some point during the trip down the hall, Maria had taken hold of the back of his jacket, keeping herself closer to him. She didn’t look at him, but down the length of the wing with marked concern, worrying her lower lip between her teeth. “I’m sure they’re just…” James paused, mulling the thought over. “Somewhere…else,” he finished, wincing internally. “There might be some staff meeting or a patient on one of the other floors is having an emergency.”

She exhaled shallowly, and he could hear a definite catch in it; whether it was due to anxiety or warning of another coughing fit, he couldn’t discern. “Look,” she said as he tried another locked door. “There’s an elevator…do you think we should try another floor, then?”

He swayed on his feet slightly, trying to weigh the options in his mind. After all the time he had spent in hospitals with Mary, he had hoped— _prayed_ —he would never need to be in one again. And yet, here they were, and there _he_ was, once again being shirked and ignored by the very people whose job it was to help. “Maybe. Hang on…” Gingerly, he unclasped her hand from his jacket, quickly jogging to the door they had come through. He stood in the open doorway, and with all the volume he could muster, tried one last time. “ _Hello? We need help!”_

There was silence, save for the distorted echoing of his own voice, calling over and over “ _Help! Help! Help…”_

“James…” Maria called from where he left her, and something in the way she said it wrenched his heart.

He walked back to her, trying to ignore the fluttering in his chest as she immediately latched back onto him. She was shaking, he noticed. She _really_ needed help. “Let’s try the elevator then,” he said, pressing the call button.

They only had to wait a moment or so before the doors slid open before them, both flinching at the smell of antiseptic and cleaner that wafted out from the small space. All the same, they stepped in, James pressing the buttons for both of the other floors. “That’s strange…”

“What?”

He tapped at the second floor button another time. “This one isn’t lighting up.”

“Maybe the light burnt out,” Maria suggested, voice slightly muffled by his jacket as she leaned against his shoulder for stability.

But the elevator’s doors didn’t open again until they had reached the third floor, suggesting that perhaps it was more than just an electrical issue. The doors opened into darkness, and James felt Maria’s grip tighten on him.

So much for hoping to find the staff on another floor.

“We should just _go_.” There was a strain to Maria’s voice he hadn’t yet heard, something akin to fear. “This doesn’t look right.”

 _She_ didn’t look right. In the low light the elevator cast, James could see how much paler she’d grown, could see the dark forks of veins in her neck. He was familiar with the look, as was anyone who spent time caretaking another. It was the look of someone who was about to get much, much worse.

“There,” he said, pointing with the hand she wasn’t grasping onto. “There’s a light coming from that room near the end of the wing, you see it?”

“Yeah…”

“If there’s someone in there, we ask them for help. If there’s no one in there, we can at least sit and rest for a while.” He didn’t want to say what he was thinking: He didn’t think Maria would be able to make it back out of the hospital on her own two feet. Not in the condition she was in. “Is it safe for you to take another dose of your medication?”

She seemed to think that over for a moment. “It should be.”

“Then why don’t you do that?”

Maria’s eyes remained on him for a few seconds before she let go of him, taking the bottle from her pocket and shaking a couple pills into her palm. She dry swallowed them, her throat working furiously at the effort, but when she took his hand again she seemed calmer.

They crossed the corridor with a speed reminiscent of a nightmare, each step stretching out before them like an eternity. Maria’s breathing was shallow and hitching, the clicking of her boot heels staccato. The light of the open door never seemed to get any closer, and there was a minute where James found himself wondering if perhaps he truly _was_ having a nightmare—a distorted reimagining of his own memories, the faces changed but the outcome the same. 

And then they reached the room and the ridiculous thought dissipated.

It was a patient room like any other, with a bed pushed against a wall, sandwiched between a rusting IV stand and a small table. There was only a bare bulb above them, buzzing loudly as a solitary moth tapped against it.

Maria moved past him before he realized, and she sat herself down on the dingy old bed, oblivious to the dark stains on its covering. Her eyes closed as she tried to catch her breath, her hands gripping onto the edge of the mattress until her knuckles turned white. “Where…could they…have gone?” she asked, and only in the light did James realize how she’d bitten away at her lipstick, revealing how pale her lips were becoming.

“I don’t know…” He shook his head and leaned an arm against the bedside table. Something crinkled under his hand and he stopped, turning to look. The room’s last occupant, it seemed, had left a magazine clipping behind. Only half-interested, he lifted the glossy page to read it, absently mouthing the words to himself.

_“Do you really love her? In sickness and in health? If you truly love her, then you must act. It all depends on how hard you fight for her. Whatever happens, don’t give up. Always try just one more time…”_

He had read it before, he thought…at least part of it. Without giving it another thought, James crumpled the sheet in his hand, letting the wadded up paper fall to the floor. “Someone _has_ to be here…” he muttered, shifting his attention as Maria began moving again, setting her pill bottle down on the side table before stretching out on the bed. “Are you sure you want to do that?”

“I’ve seen worse,” she said with a hint of that coy smirk, but her face had gone too pale for James to buy it. “I just need to rest for a couple minutes, then we can go look again. That medicine always makes me so tired…”

“No,” James shook his head. “Maria you need help _now_. I can go and find someone, you just stay here.”

“ _Alone?!_ ” Her posture changed all at once and she sat bolt upright as though he had proposed she jump off the roof. “You’re gonna just _leave_ me here?” She started to stand, but James kept a hand on her shoulder, easing her back down. “You can’t just _leave_ me. I don’t want to be alone here, James! I don’t want to be _alone!_ ”

Not for the first time, James felt his heart leap into his chest. He’d had this conversation before, of that much he was sure. How many times had Mary clutched at his arm, begging him not to go, not to leave the hospital room where she was confined, arms full of needles and brain fogged with chemicals? How many times had he seen panic bloom in large, plaintive eyes? “It’ll just be until I find a doctor,” he said as he’d said tens—if not _hundreds_ —of times before. “I’ll be right back. It’ll be a couple of minutes at most.”

She watched him, eyes still wide, shoulders slumped, but after a long, sad pause, she seemed to accept it. Slowly, she eased herself down onto the mattress, lying on her side. James had no idea how she had managed to so easily ignore the disgusting condition of the hospital bed, but he knew exhaustion when he saw it. She needed rest. He turned to leave, but stopped again at an incessant tug at his wrist.

“James, I…I want to ask you something.” Her fingers had curled around the cuff of his jacket, but he could feel her skin against his and had to actively fight the sudden urge to take her hand in his. “What if…what if you don’t find Mary?” Maria asked, her voice low with fatigue, strained with her coughing. 

The tiles of the floor were chipped and lined with mildew, hinting at decades of blood and abuse, but he wasn’t sure he could bring himself to look anywhere else. “I don’t know,” he admitted. “I guess…I haven’t thought about that.” It had never struck him as a possibility, really. He had seen the letter, seen her handwriting, smelled her perfume, and that had been it. There had been no backup plan. Come to think of it…he realized he didn’t know what he thought he would do if he _did_ find Mary. What came next?

Her hand dropped away from his, but only after a split-second of tender contact. He hated the way it made him shiver, the feel of her skin. Maria curled up on the bed, one arm tucked under her head as she began to doze. “I’ll be fine soon…” she reassured him, voice becoming slurred with sleep. “Just…we have to find Laura.”

James was jerked rudely out of his reverie by the statement. “Who?” he asked, looking down to her. “Maria…who’s Laura?” But there was no answer outside of the quiet sound of Maria’s breathing. He cast her one last long, lingering look before shaking his head and stepping quietly back outside of the room.

It was clear she wasn’t well—in more ways than one. But for the time being, there was nothing else he could do there. As much as he didn’t want to, he’d have to leave her there in that sorry state…at least until he could find some help. And so he left her in the hospital room as he had left Mary so many times before, assuming she’d be safe and sound until he returned.

“Hello?” he called into the patient wing, cringing when the only response was his own voice bouncing back to him. He went door by door, trying the handles or peeking through windows, trying to find someone, _anyone_ , who might be able to help.

Strangely enough, the entire area appeared to be as deserted as the first floor had been. There were no orderlies making the rounds, no nurses, and more to the point…no other patients. Maria would’ve known if the hospital had been abandoned, right?

Brow furrowed, James walked back to the stairwell, making his way back down to the second floor landing. Try as he might, the door was stuck, and there was no answer when he banged and called through it. “Where _is_ everyone?”

Climbing the stairs was significantly more difficult the second time around, and he found himself panting by the time he passed the third floor landing and realized with a slight measure of surprise that the stairs continued upwards. He stood on the landing, one hand clutching the railing as he fought to catch his breath. It was odd, he thought, that the patient elevator they had taken up to the third floor hadn’t had a button for a fourth floor. When his breath returned to him, James continued climbing, hoping that Maria was still asleep and hadn’t yet started to question where he’d been.

He opened the door and was greeted immediately by a blast of cool, damp air. It took his eyes a moment to adjust to the sudden light—there _was_ no fourth floor, it seemed, just access to the roof. Thankfully, the fog had grown thicker in the short time they’d been in the hospital, and there wasn’t much light for his eyes long to acclimate to. “Hello?” he tried again, feeling his voice beginning to grow hoarse, “ _Hello?”_

The fog seemed to sink down around him, swirling in heavy clouds and obscuring his vision. There wasn’t much to the roof, as far as he could see. Guard rails and wire surrounded the perimeter, ostensibly providing a safety measure for those staff or patients who ventured up for fresh air. To his left, there was a small, self-contained room that jutted out, a sign on the door reading: DANGER! HIGH VOLTAGE. Maintenance, he thought to himself, taking another tentative step out of the stairwell.

James had only just begun to wonder if maybe someone could’ve been couched away in that room when he stepped on something that wasn’t concrete. He looked down, perplexed, and slowly bent to pick the book up. The cover was the black and white sort he hadn’t seen since grade school, the owner’s name smudged and illegible from the humidity of the lake air. Brow knit, he opened it, surprised to find that the pages had all come loose from their central binding. The same dampness that had caused the ink to run on the cover must’ve affected the glue as well, he thought, and it was such a shame because almost every page was covered front to back in writing—someone was probably missing this journal very much.

His mouth filled with saliva suddenly, the immediate precursor of becoming ill, and his stomach gave a terrifying lurch before he even registered what was wrong. The air had become heavy with a horrid, acrid stench. It was something metallic, something like ozone or rust or blood. His nose and mouth were full of the putrid reek, choking his breath as though he were drowning in it, and when he lifted his eyes from the journal, he was afforded the briefest glance of its source.

The body was human, streaked with gore and grime. The head was _not_. The head was all angles and edges, impossibly sharp corners and rivets. And underneath, something…something _pulsed_ , gelatinous and unspeakable. Worst of all, as it took shape in the fog, his mind buzzed with _familiarity_ , as though he’d seen it somewhere previously, as though he’d stood before it and choked down its horrible carrion reek.

The journal’s pages scattered as James’s muscles slackened and he dropped it to the ground once more. He stared and the thing, the awful thing with the rusting pyramid where its head should’ve been, simply stared back. He watched as its chest rose and fell, rose and fell, almost in perfect sync with his own; there was a strange, surreal moment where he found himself thinking of funhouse mirrors…and then he ran.

Returning to the stairwell meant turning his back on the thing, and he knew instinctively that it would mean his demise. Instead, he sprinted to the door that warned of HIGH VOLTAGE and threw his weight into it, scrambling to slam it shut behind him as he all but fell into the room.

It was small, it was cramped, and he realized very quickly that it was the main control room for the staff elevator. The doors were open, and he prayed that the toolbox on the elevator’s floor was from repairs that had already been completed. In rapid succession, he jammed the first floor and door close buttons, pressing the latter relentlessly. The ground shook with what could’ve only been heavy footsteps, growing closer and closer and closer with each passing second.

The thick metal doors slowly slid shut, and the elevator lurched downwards. James felt his legs begin to go weak, and braced himself against one of the walls. He could taste vomit on the back of his tongue, could feel his body drenched in a cold, clammy sweat beneath his jacket. Above him, the elevator’s PA system crackled to life, filling the small space with a loud burst of static, causing him to gasp aloud. Before he had time enough to react further, a piercing siren rent the air.

James clapped his hands over his ears, but it did little to muffle the deafening screech.

“MAY I HAVE YOUR ATTENTION PLEASE. MAY I HAVE YOUR ATTENTION PLEASE. THERE IS AN EMERGENCY IN THE HOSPITAL.”

At the booming voice, he looked up at the small speaker embedded in the wall. An emergency—someone else must’ve noticed the thing on the roof! Even though the voice was automated, its syllables clipped and staccato, his chest began to flood with relief. There _were_ other people in the hospital!   
  
“MAY I HAVE YOUR ATTENTION PLEASE. MAY I HAVE YOUR ATTENTION PLEASE. THERE IS AN EMERGENCY IN THE HOSPITAL.”

Under him, the elevator stopped moving. The panel above the doors had gone worringly dark, giving no hint as to what floor he was on. It was probably some sort of override for emergency situations, he thought; and though it meant removing his hands from his ears, he got up and began pressing the door open button. James winced against the shriek of the alarm, but none of the buttons were lighting up, regardless of how hard he pressed them.

“MAY I HAVE YOUR ATTENTION PLEASE. MAY I HAVE YOUR ATTENTION PLEASE.” The automated message continued at its regular interval. “SHE’S DEAD, JAMES.”

His blood turned to ice.

Suddenly, it was as though he couldn’t hear the siren anymore, as though the elevator had filled with water and sounds had grown strangely muffled. He turned from the elevator’s control panel, then, and slowly looked back up towards the speaker. Seconds seem to stretch into minutes, into hours, into _days_ as he stared, half expecting the tiny grate to sprout fangs.

He must’ve misheard it. He was tired from the drive and he was stressed from whatever he had seen on the roof, and his mind was playing horrible tricks on him.

But then, it dawned on him.

 _Maria_. He had left Maria alone on the third floor, sick and sleeping and vulnerable, and that _thing_ was only a floor above her. He began pounding on the buttons again.

“MAY I HAVE YOUR ATTENTION PLEASE. MAY I HAVE YOUR ATTENTION PLEASE. SHE’S DEAD, JAMES. SHE’S DEAD AND YOU DESERVE TO DIE, TOO.”

“You’re _lying!_ ” The sound of his own voice startled him in the small room. “She’s not dead—she’s _not!_ She’s waiting for me! She’s fine—she’s _fine!_ I’m going to _find_ her and we’re going to get _out_ of this place, and we’re going to go _home_ , and—”

The PA system crackled with loud, popping static once more. And then, at once incredibly loud and _impossibly_ distant, came a different voice. “James! _Wait!_ Please don’t go! _Stay with me!_ Don’t leave me alone! I didn’t mean what I said… _please_ James! Tell me I’ll be okay! Tell me I’m not going to die… _help me_ …”

“Maria?” he choked out, eyes wide and searching, as though she might appear next to him. But that wasn’t right…it wasn’t right at all. That wasn’t _Maria’s_ voice, was it? It was similar, it was _close_ , but… “ _Mary?”_

Around him, an eerie wheezing sound began to overpower the sirens. It was dry and deep and rasping, the gasp of ventilators chugging away. But slowly, its pitch started to change, started to _rise_ , until it was a shrill whistle of breath. Somehow it still seemed muffled, as though there was a layer of something thick between him and it, but the volume only seemed to increase; all he could hear was the horrendous scream around him, growing louder and louder until even his own thoughts had been entirely drowned out.

Just when it seemed it would never end, that he would never hear anything else for the rest of his days, the elevator made a cheerful little _ding!_ and the doors opened onto the first floor.

“ _No!_ ” he yelled, slamming the third floor button with a renewed fervor. But again, there was no light in the panel, no sign that it was registering his choice. There was no _time_ , though, not with Maria on the third floor and the red pyramid thing so close.

He all but threw himself out of the elevator and began scrambling for the stairwell, shoes squeaking loudly on the linoleum. It was then that he saw them, congregated near the reception area he and Maria had come in from originally— _nurses_ , three of them. “Oh thank God,” James breathed in relief, quickening his pace to jog over to them. “Excuse me? Excuse me! I need help—there’s someone upstairs who’s very sick, and—”

In the back of his mind, he had realized something was wrong long before he approached them. There was an _emergency_ in the hospital, there were sirens going off and lights flashing, but these three weren’t moving. Not at all. More to the point, they weren’t _talking_ ; no one was giving hurried orders, no one was acknowledging the chaos, no one was doing _anything_.

“Uh…” he started again, surprised at how small his voice had become. “E-excuse me?”

One turned to him. Her movements were jerky, abrupt, and _wrong_. In the flashing strobe of the emergency lights, James thought he could see blood on her uniform. The shadows created by the flashing lights didn’t afford him much of a look, but it didn’t take much to realize what his gut had known all along.

James turned on his heel and ran again, darting into the stairwell amid the telltale sound of heeled shoes clicking behind him. He took the stairs two at a time, using the railing to help propel himself upwards as he tried frantically to convince himself that the lights had been warping his view, that there _had_ to be some explanation for the smooth, rounded plane of the nurse’s head. She must’ve just been wearing a mask, he told himself, there was no _way_ that she hadn’t had a face.

By the time he made it to the landing of the third floor, his lungs were burning with exertion. But he paid it no mind as he ran back into the patient wing. When he saw the door to room, his stomach sank. It was wide open, no sign of anyone on the bed or anywhere else.

“James!”

The suddenness of the voice made him jump, and he whirled to find Maria standing there in the darkened hallway, disheveled and wide-eyed. “ _Maria_ ,” he sighed with palpable relief, immediately pulling her close to him. He hadn’t _meant_ to, but the motion had been so automatic, so _instinctive_ …

“James, what is going _on_?” Her voice was strained, muffled slightly as she buried her face in his jacket, her fingers almost unnaturally strong as they gripped his back. “The noises? Those… _things?_ ” She sounded moments away from tears, and James pressed her harder against him. “I’ve never been so scared in my whole life! Oh God, don’t ever leave me alone again!”

“I won’t,” he said, casting a wary look down the hallway. “I won’t. Come on, we have to get out of here.”

She didn’t argue.

Though he was loath to do it after his most recent experience, James led them to the patient wing’s elevator. There was no delay, the door sliding open with a little chime. Unlike the employee elevator, the lights were bright and white and welcoming, and as he stepped in with Maria still clinging firmly to his side, he found that the control panel was entirely lit up. He pressed the button for the first floor, heart in his throat as he remembered the strange encounter with the nurses.

It had to have been his mind playing tricks on him. It had to have been the way the lights were flashing. It had to have been the stress he was feeling after seeing…whatever it was he had seen.

And when the doors slid open again, he began to believe it. Just as it had been when they’d first arrived, the lights of the first floor cast a warm, sterile white glow about the place. The linoleum floors gleamed beneath them, the entire area bathed in funereal silence.

James swallowed hard around the lump in his throat as he stepped out, looking first one way and then the other, some part of him still convinced that the faceless things were hidden just around the corner, that the red pyramid thing was waiting just beyond his line of sight. “Come on,” he said finally, his voice small as he tentatively led Maria back to the entrance. He cast one last lingering, disbelieving look over his shoulder as he pushed the door open for her, but found he had no desire to stand around in the hospital’s preternatural stillness.

Outside, Maria hugged her arms around herself, trembling noticeably. “What _was_ all of that?” she asked, tone hushed as though she was speaking in a church instead of the wide-open street. “You saw it too, right?” Her eyes were plaintive, her lips downturned. It was strange, James thought, how different she looked when she wasn’t smirking.

“I…I don’t know,” he said, answering both of her questions at once. He placed a hand on the small of her back, leading her gently away from the hospital. “All I know is that we need to get out of here.”

Still clutching herself, Maria nodded. “We’re…pretty far from the Lakeview, but I think if we go up this street…”

“No.” And James found that the sudden strength of his voice surprised him every bit as much as it did Maria. She looked up at him, startled. “I mean…I mean we need to get out of Silent Hill,” he said, feeling his eyes pulled back to the shape of the hospital as it was slowly swallowed by fog. “There’s something wrong with this town.”

Maria watched him very carefully as they walked back towards Heaven’s Night. James could feel her eyes on him, and for the barest of instants felt as though he was being examined under a microscope. When he turned back to her, though, her expression was softer than he had anticipated. “James,” she said in barely a whisper, “What about your wife?”

His chest grew tight and he wet his lips with a sliver of his tongue. What _about_ Mary? He had come all this way, had been so set on finding her, but now…now all he wanted to do was put Silent Hill in his rearview mirror. He wanted to pretend he’d never set foot in the place, that he’d left it all in the recesses of his memory, that he’d buried it all with Mary. When the hospital was no longer discernible through the fog, when he saw that there was no carrion beast chasing after them, only then did James let himself breathe again. And with his breath, he found his answer. “Mary’s…gone,” he said finally. “She’s dead.” He felt his adam’s apple bob as he swallowed, the realization as bitter as medicine on the back of his tongue. “The Mary I know isn’t here. She never was. I just…I wanted to see something of her, I think. Even…even an _illusion_ of her.”

Maria was silent, her eyes trained on the ground as they walked.

“It’s been…it’s been a long three years,” he said, more to himself than to her. “I’ve been so… _tired_.” James reached up and raked his fingers through his hair, surprised to find his skin feeling so clammy. “But I’m not going to find Mary here. I know that now. “And besides…” he found himself trailing off, palms sweaty and stomach in knots.

She looked up at him, curiosity bright in her eyes. “What, James?” Maria asked, offering him a perplexed half-smile as she slid one of her hands to his arm.

“I want…I want _you_ with me,” and it still felt so _wrong_ to say, felt as though he were spitting on Mary’s grave, but Maria was here, and she was real, and she was so full of _life_. She was everything Mary had been when first they’d met. Everything and _more_. He had found himself strangely, inexplicably drawn to her in the same way he’d fallen helplessly for Mary all those years ago. “I really do.”

If she was taken aback by the request, she didn’t show it, her smile simply widening to show a sliver of perfectly straight teeth. In the dim light of the town, he realized he _had_ found what he was looking for, all along. An illusion of Mary. A ghost of her. “Are you sure?”

He exhaled a long, steadying breath, nodding his head. “I am. Now come on, let’s get out of here. I think I’m done with this place.” There was an unsettling wave of relief that washed over him as Maria laced her fingers through his. It was so familiar but so _new_ , and as they continued to walk, he had the strangest suspicion his heart was beating in time with her footsteps.

“But…are you sure? I’ve never been anywhere else…” Maria didn’t quite sound uncertain, but there was a hesitance in her voice, an apprehension hanging over them like the fog. It was the tone of a child worried that their new toy was going to be taken away, that the promise of dessert was going to be rescinded.

“It’s okay,” James said, thumb absently tracing circles against her skin. “It’s okay. I have you. We have each other, now.”

At that, she laughed, sandwiching his hand between both of hers.

The fog in the town had thickened, but with the hospital so far behind them, James found it difficult to feel anything other than serenity as they walked through it. If anything, it seemed to have a softening effect on everything they passed—each building, each abandoned car. Even the sound of their footsteps had grown somehow muted, somehow dreamlike as they walked through the silence of Silent Hill.

They were forced to stop every so often so that Maria could rest. James had no question that the heels of her boots were only agitating her exhaustion, but she couldn’t very well walk up the forest path from the town in bare feet. By the time they had returned to the observation deck, all but a sliver of the sun had disappeared behind the tree line, painting the sky deep blues and greens and greys, warning of an oncoming storm. Already he could smell ozone collecting above.

“Looks like something big’s coming this way,” Maria said, craning her head upwards to watch the clouds gather. “I bet it’s going to be nasty when it hits.”

“We’ll be long gone by then,” James reassured her, patting his pockets until he found his keys.

For a moment she grew quiet, her eyes reflecting the grey of the coming storm. “Are you sure about that?” 

James paused, having only just unlocked the car for them. “What do you mean?” he asked, only to be cut off by another fit of coughing. He moved to Maria, holding out an arm to steady her, but she had already reached in her pocket for the pill bottle, popping open the lid and allowing a couple capsules to roll into her palm.

Once the coughs subsided, she set the bottle down on the trunk of the car as she swallowed the last of its contents. “I’ll be fine.” Maria said as she slipped past him and slid into the car, flashing him a knowing smile. “Like I said, it’s probably just a hangover, anyway.”

“Yeah,” James laughed, shutting the door once she was buckled in. “Probably,” he added, walking around the back of the car. He paused for only a moment at the trunk, heart in his throat. The pill bottle lay on its side, gleaming orange in the setting sun. Maria’s words echoed in his head, ringing somehow sinister as he turned the bottle over in his hands. It must’ve fallen out of the car. It couldn’t have been the same canister Maria had only just set down, not when he recognized the prescribing doctor’s name; not when the label read “ _Mary Sheperd-Sunderland_ — _Take as needed.”_

“It’s probably just a hangover,” James muttered to himself, throwing the empty bottle over his shoulder. “I’m _sure_ that’s all it is.”

He opened the driver’s side door and started the engine. Next to him, Maria clapped her hands to her mouth, doubled over under the force of her coughing. When James turned to look at her, the observation deck already shrinking in his rearview mirror, she straightened back up with a sheepish smile, folding her hands on her lap. And while it was more likely a trick of the eye than anything else, he could’ve _sworn_ he saw a fine spray of blood dappling her palms. “We’d better do something about that cough,” he commented breezily, as though he didn’t already know the prognosis. It would be fine, he reasoned. After all, he’d been through it once before.


End file.
